John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy have something to answer for
House Speaker John Boehner should use his final month in office to
disband the Benghazi Committee, a group of Democratic senators suggested in a letter Thursday, "after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent comments admitting that the Select Committee was put together to serve the political purpose of defeating Secretary Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential elections by hurting her in the polls, rather than conducting a serious investigation into a terrorist attack that killed four Americans." Sens. Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, and Barbara Boxer continued:
The Select Committee on Benghazi has already cost the American tax payers over 4.5 million dollars on what the House Majority Leader has now made clear is nothing more than a political attack against Secretary Clinton. This investigation is one of the longest in Congressional history, surpassing the length of the Watergate Committee, the Joint Committee investigating Pearl Harbor, the Warren Commission, and the Iran Contra investigation.
We would also note that the Select Committee on Benghazi, after months of investigation, found no evidence supporting any of the original Republican conspiracy theories on Benghazi. Republicans are now continuing to use the Committee for ongoing political investigations of Secretary Clinton with absolutely no linkage to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi.
It is unconscionable that the US House of Representatives is continuing to use millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for political purposes, and we urge you to immediately disband the Select Committee on Benghazi.
Some House Democrats have
the same idea:
“The decent thing to do is to wrap up the committee’s work as soon as possible,” said Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), another member of the committee and a 2016 Senate candidate. “[T]he majority leader’s partisan disclosure breaks the promise we made to the victims’ families to make sure a tragedy of this magnitude never happens again.”
Obviously this idea is going nowhere, since, as McCarthy said, this is the point of the Benghazi Committee. Why would Boehner kill it off for doing what it was supposed to do all along? But even if Boehner won't consider it, it's a suggestion that deserves a full and serious hearing in the media.