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In the 2016 election, many Democrats in the House had been extremely cautious in publicly discussing what they could do if they returned to a majority after mid-term.
But last week, while the polls were favorable and the minority House leader, Nancy Pelosi, publicly announced the victory, some details began to emerge about the party's plans now. that he returns to power in the lower house.
Although the exact margin remains to be determined, Democrats should now hold the majority, thanks to disaffected voters from the Trump government, and the first item on the agenda will be transparency and accountability.
The first major legislative effort will be a set of ethics reforms designed to incorporate proposals for the reform of campaign finance, voting rights, ethics and accountability. The bill is still being drafted, but Democrats expect it to be introduced at the beginning of the new Congress. The infrastructure and the reduction of the price of prescription drugs are other priorities. All of these topics theoretically present potential for bipartite cooperation, although it remains to be seen whether this will materialize.
At the same time, the new presidents of the 21 committees of the House will look for ways to silence Trump administration officials, mainly by advancing investigations that they believe have been ignored by the Republican majority.
This effort will be led primarily by the Government's Monitoring and Reform Committee, which will likely be chaired by Maryland's representative, Elijah Cummings. This work, however, will almost inevitably expand to include all committees that have a section dedicated solely to monitoring. Intelligence and justice commissions will likely also find their work in the spotlight, as will Ways and Means, which has the power to petition Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for statements from President Donald Trump.
Democratic representative Jerry Nadler said in a statement that the results indicated that "Americans demand accountability".
"We have to go and see what happens," said Maryland Representative John Sarbanes, who serves on the Oversight Committee. "Our job is to present the information to the American people so that he can decide who he wants to lead the federal government."
Read more: Nancy Pelosi does not care what you think of her. And she's not going anywhere
How they achieve this goal, however, is almost as important as what they can discover. And while their new position of power gives lawmakers the power to essentially assign the president and the administrations to any answer, congressional veterans call for restraint.
"What I have said to my colleagues and Democratic friends is that they have the responsibility to use the powers of surveillance responsibly, in a credible way. If they abuse their powers, they will have no credibility, which is a bad result for what they're trying to do, "said Henry Waxman, who led the Democrats on the committee. over ten years and was in frequent contact with members of the Management Board. and leadership of the House. Waxman said lawmakers of his party should study how Republicans investigated the Benghazi attack in 2012 – and then do the exact opposite.
"Yes [a] The chair of the committee said, "Oh, we are going to investigate Trump and look for anything he could have done wrong, criminal or otherwise." It would be an abuse of power, "he said. "I think it would be a big mistake."
Up until now, House committees that have leaked a semblance of their plans seem to follow Waxman's advice. "We will not chase Republicans as they did," Pelosi told reporters on Tuesday. "We are Democrats and Democrats have an open and transparent Congress that will aim at bipartisanship."
In an interview with CNN last month, Democrats would use their power of investigation and surveillance in a "strategic" way. "It's about bringing people together," she said. "The people who said are you going to dismiss the president will you dismiss [Kavanaugh?] No. If there is a bipartisan … inevitable dismissal, but it's not something that a party does. "
Cummings' monitoring objectives align with this rhetoric. According to a member of the Democratic Party, his idea of the commission's goals is twofold: to expose simultaneously what the Democrats see as the waste and fraud of the Trump administration while simultaneously working on political issues. The first half of this mission includes investigative work, which should include Trump's financial clashes – including investigations to determine whether disassociating from his company violates the constitutional clause relating to emoluments – as well as the controversy surrounding the members of his administration, that it's about Jared Kushner's security clearances or the misuse of taxpayer money by the former EPA Director, Scott Pruitt. The president's immigration policy should also be mi- grated.
"What I have always been asking my Republican Presidents is to gather the facts about the corruption crisis in the Trump administration," Cummings said in a statement delivered to TIME. "The waste, fraud and abuse are obvious – and the most important thing for the Oversight Committee is to use its authority to obtain documents and witnesses, and to hold the Trump administration accountable to the people. American."
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