McCarthy And Jeffries Create Task Force For Committee Removals
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) joined forces to form a bipartisan panel to formalize the process for removing legislators from their committee assignments.
This follows Democrats removing a pair of conservative Republicans from their committee assignments in the last Congress and the GOP reciprocating when the party took control of the House in January.
McCarthy reportedly tapped Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) to spearhead the effort while Jeffries has members of his own party ready to join.
The latest move in the congressional tug-of-war came when Republicans stripped Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from her prime position on the House Foreign Affairs over comments that were criticized by both parties.
Despite the nearly unanimous GOP support for the move, some Republicans expressed concerns that Omar was not afforded due process during her removal.
They further compared it to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s unceremonious dumping of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), which was also roundly criticized for lacking due process.
McCarthy also removed Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from the House Intelligence Committee in January. He reasoned that Schiff’s questionable conduct during the Trump-Russia investigation and Swalwell’s ties to an alleged Chinese spy were reason enough.
Democrats slammed his moves as “political vengeance,” even though it was their acts against Greene and Gosar that began the cycle.
The Washington Examiner reported that a senior GOP aide said that the joint task force is being formed to search for “a way to not have this devolve into a every time it flips, anybody the majority doesn’t like comes off their committees.”
And while that on the surface is a noble goal, leftist Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for starting that ball rolling. They went after a pair of the most conservative Republicans in a witch hunt that was only going to end one way.
Then the GOP took control of the House in January, and there was never the slightest doubt that retribution was coming.
