The House GOP’s Phony Mayorkas Impeachment
House Republicans are showing just how little interest they have in solving the nation’s problems.
In 2023, the Republican-controlled House passed a meager 27 bills, the fewest since 1932. They have a dismal record in this Congress when it comes to solving important and urgent national problems.
A classic example of this is playing out before our eyes.
House Republicans are moving to an expected vote as soon as next week to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department oversees immigration.
This effort is being undertaken by House Republicans without presenting any evidence to meet the impeachment standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” set forth in Article II of the Constitution.
There is no constitutional basis for using impeachment as a means to express policy differences or dissatisfaction with an official’s job performance. Yet, that is precisely what House Republicans are attempting to do for purely political purposes.
In pursuing this faux impeachment, House Republicans are denigrating the Constitution and creating a terrible precedent that is likely to lead to the ongoing use of impeachment as a political tool.
The last time the House impeached a Cabinet official was in 1876.
(And even if Mayorkas is impeached by the House, the effort will appropriately die in the Senate.)
So what is going on here? Immigration and the problems at the southern border are hot button issues that House Republicans want to feature in their 2024 campaigns.
They chose Secretary Mayorkas as their scapegoat to create the illusion that they’re doing something about the border problem when, in reality, they’re not.
Their baseless impeachment effort is just for show.
Republicans and their self-appointed leader, Donald Trump, have a schizophrenic approach to the problems on the border, driven by partisan and electoral desires rather than any real effort to solve problems.
Last year, the Republican-controlled House passed an extreme immigration bill. But, with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President, only bipartisan legislation stands a chance of being enacted and certainly not the extreme version House Republicans passed.
When a supplemental appropriations bill was proposed by the Biden Administration to fund Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and address the immigration and border problems, House Republicans demanded that their extreme immigration bill be included in the legislation.
In the Senate, there have been months of bipartisan negotiations, led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and James Lankford (R-OK). The negotiations reportedly are close to being finalized and are expected to include many tough immigration provisions sought by Republicans (although the negotiations could still collapse).
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) threw cold water on the effort claiming it was “dead on arrival” in the House unless it incorporated the extreme House-passed legislation.
Then, out of the blue, Trump and House Republicans have done a 180-degree turn. They’ve started claiming that legislation isn’t needed to solve the border problems after all; President Biden, they now argue, can and should do it alone.
They never explain why they have been pushing for legislation for years and passed legislation last year, but now suddenly have decided it’s not necessary.
Trump as President demanded Congress pass legislation to secure the border. Now he says: “A border bill is not necessary” and “CLOSE THE SOUTHERN BORDER, NO BILL NECESSARY!!!”
Speaker Johnson, who demanded the extreme House bill passed in 2023 be included in any supplemental bill, said this past weekend: “President Biden falsely claimed yesterday he needs Congress to pass a new law to allow him to close the southern border.”
The impetus for this remarkable change could not be clearer – they don’t want President Biden to get any credit for addressing the border problem.
Politics playing out big in a presidential election year is not unusual.
But when a fundamental problem for the country is at stake, it is reckless and irresponsible for House Republicans to abuse the impeachment process and use hypocritical claims to make cheap political points at the expense of the country and the Constitution.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
