OPINION — Democrats controlling the House next January should see an Armed Services Committee that supports some reduced defense spending in fiscal 2020, and an Intelligence Committee that protects, rather-than-attacks, the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Both committees will open aggressive inquiries into Trump activities in their separate areas of interest.
The prospective Democratic chairmen of both committees have already given clear indications of what they each have in mind.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who - as ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence - is in line to become chairman, recently told National Public Radio (NPR) that one of the first things he will investigate is whether Donald Trump Jr., informed his father of the Trump Tower pre-election, June 6, 2016, meeting with Russian nationals and whether his father, then a presidential candidate, approved that meeting.
“That’s obviously pivotal in terms of the president's involvement in any potential collusion or conspiracy to seek Russian help — illegal Russian help — during the campaign,” Schiff said.
The intelligence panel’s earlier investigation found that Donald Trump Jr., participated in a call “from a blocked number” in between phone calls setting up the meeting with the Russian who was promising dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign. Schiff told NPR, “We know the president used a blocked phone during the campaign,” but the Democrats never could get the Republicans to agree to subpoena the phone records. Next January, they won’t have that same problem.
Another new committee area of inquiry that Schiff is looking into, is “whether the Russians were laundering money through the Trump Organization. And this is leverage that they possess over the president of the United States,” Schiff said during the interview, again pointing out that the GOP intelligence committee leadership would not permit subpoenas in that area.
Schiff also said that the intelligence panel should share the testimony of earlier witnesses with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, particularly those “in which we have profound concerns over whether they committed perjury.” He said that Mueller’s investigators would be in the best position to follow up on those concerns.
One name Schiff mentioned was Roger Stone, the informal advisor to the Trump campaign. “Some of his (Stone’s) answers before our committee are highly suspect,” said Schiff, based on some of the more recently released Stone emails.
Schiff played down his investigative plans during his Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. Instead, he put his emphasis on the importance of the democratic-controlled House focusing on health care as “priority number one.”
“Let's face it, the investigations are sexy,” Schiff said. “They're interesting. You bring witnesses before the Klieg lights, people tune in. The legislative process is less so. It's much less dramatic. But nonetheless in terms of importance to the American people, making sure that they can provide for their families, that they can get health care, they can keep their health care, [and] that has to be priority number one.”
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking minority member and the presumptive chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, recently told McClatchy News that he could not talk future numbers but, “It is my firm belief that, given the $22 trillion debt and trillion-dollar deficit produced by the Republicans’ tax cuts, the Pentagon is going to have less money in the future. We need to scrub the defense budget to better reflect that reality.”
The Trump administration has already said that it wants five percent cut from the planned fiscal 2020 budget, which would take it down to $700 billion, $16 billion below this fiscal year and a whopping $33 billion below what was originally planned.
Many Pentagon officials thought a Republican-controlled Congress would not accept the Trump cuts, but those hopes have vanished.
One place for possible reductions that Smith mentioned last week, was in the costly plans for modernizing the nuclear weapons delivery systems and the addition of new nuclear weapons. “Focusing on President Trump’s new nuclear arms race would increase the risk of miscalculation, wreck the budget, and detract from our ability to invest in cyber, information operations and our troops,” Smith said.
In a letter to his House democratic colleagues seeking their support for his chairmanship, Smith stressed that “much more must be done to conduct vigorous oversight of the Trump Administration and the Department of Defense.” One point he focused on was what he described as Trump’s “politically-motivated fear mongering” and his sending of U.S. regular Army units - days before the congressional election - to the Southwest border “as means to drive his troubling anti-immigration agenda.”
However, there appears to be a growing consensus among House democrats that they should delay using their newly-acquired majority to immediately start public, congressional investigative hearings into the Trump Administration and President Trump, himself.
There is no need to create big headlines by going after Donald Trump’s income tax returns or pushing for an impeachment resolution.
Trump and his administration are moving targets for Congressional oversight. But solid investigations take time and should require rigorous preparation before any type of public hearing. Members should not position themselves for failure by publicly putting forth ill-prepared legislators asking questions based on recent briefings, press or television stories, with no ability to judge the truth of any answer they receive.
The democrats have an opportunity to get some of the answers they’ve been asking for over the past 18 months or so, but they’re going to have to step up and demonstrate their own willingness to follow the facts and not just take the easy, political path.
