Rep. Tom MacArthur, the Republican who put his name on the Trumpcare amendment weakening protections for people with pre-existing conditions, faced a tough town hall crowd on Wednesday. While MacArthur rightly caught hell over his Trumpcare role, he also rejected calls for a special prosecutor to look into Trump-Russia ties, and showed that even members of Congress can be seriously in need of a Civics 101 lesson:
“We don’t oversee the executive,” he added, earning a round of loud boos from the audience. “Congress is not the board of directors of the White House.”
Ah, screw checks and balances! Never heard of ‘em!
Granted, the “House Oversight Committee” isn’t doing much oversight at the moment since it’s controlled by Republicans who aren’t interested in knowing what Donald Trump is doing. But it is a thing that exists, and if a Democrat was in the White House you’d be seeing every Republican from Jason Chaffetz to Tom MacArthur trotting out to announce that the role of Congress is to oversee the executive.
And you know what? They wouldn’t be 100 percent wrong. They’d be wrong that the role of Congress is to endlessly hound every Democratic president on the most minor pretexts, but when they refuse to conduct even the least little bit of oversight of Donald Trump, they are refusing to do their job. And now they’re refusing to admit it even is their job to begin with.