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House GOP sets its top priority: Covering up for Donald Trump's crime spree
House GOP sets its top priority: Covering up for Donald Trump's crime spree
Yeah, the GOP is coming for Biden, but the new House majority's No. 1 job is shielding Trump from accountability
By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JANUARY 11, 2023 5:45AM (EST)
(Salon) Tradition dictates that the political party in charge of Congress signals its priorities to the American people in the very first bills it passes after convening. After the "blue wave" of 2018, the Democrats gained control of the House and immediately passed the For the People Act, meant to protect voting rights. In 2021, with a narrower majority, Democrats passed the bill again. Sadly, both times the legislation collapsed in the Senate, a victim of the filibuster and the GOP's sweeping rejection of voting rights. Still, the message was sent and received: Democrats believe in extending and safeguarding the right to vote, unlike other parties that back a certain fascist-flavored, orange-hued pseudo-billionaire.
After last week's protracted and frankly hilarious intra-GOP battle over the speakership, Republicans got straight to work passing their first big messaging bill: Allowing rich tax cheats to evade legal consequences for defrauding the government. The bill would rescind an $8 billion-a-year expansion of the IRS budget that was signed into law by President Biden last year. That money is meant to address numerous issues, such as improving customer service (which everyone ought to want), but Republicans haven't tried to hide what truly offends them her: Money earmarked for pursuing criminal prosecutions of wealthy tax evaders.
In their usual dishonest fashion, Republicans have been demagoguing this issue for months, falsely implying that the Biden administration wants to go after middle-class people who fudged a little in estimating the value of their donations to Goodwill. In reality, as many experts have pointed out, this funding is meant to make it less likely the IRS will go after ordinary people. More resources means prioritizing the wealthy tax cheats who have consistently been able to outspend the IRS on legal fees, and often avoid serious consequences. If this GOP bill were to pass, it would result in more than $100 billion in lost government revenue, much of that staying in the pockets of the yacht-owning class.
....(snip)....
For instance, one of the first changes McCarthy pushed through the House involved a series of rules meant to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body empowered to investigate complaints about members of Congress. It's no mystery why this is a top priority for so many Republicans in Congress. Multiple GOP members have been under suspicion for the role they played in the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, and four were referred to the (now also defanged) House Ethics Committee by the Jan. 6 select committee last year. The Office of Congressional Ethics isn't under Republican control, which means there's a very real chance it could have found evidence of sedition-related crimes. Now, effectively disempowered, it may not get the chance.
....(snip)....
House Republicans like to talk a big game about how much they hate corruption and law-breaking, but even the supposed actions they are taking on that front serve precisely the opposite purpose: They're meant to shield Trump and anyone else involved in his attempted coup after the 2020 election. The main example of this blatant two-faced strategy is the nascent subcommittee devoted to investigating (eye roll) the "Weaponization of the Federal Government." This ludicrous panel is being justified with a lot of disingenuous posturing about the "deep state" corruption of federal law enforcement, but as absolutely everyone knows, the real purpose of the subcommittee is to cover up, and perhaps embolden, both corruption and actual sedition. We can expect the committee to focus on harassing and threatening any Justice Department employees who dare try to enforce laws against political violence or seditious conspiracy against Trump and others implicated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. .....................(more)
https://www.salon.com/2023/01/11/sets-its-top-priority-covering-up-for-donald-spree/
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