A comprehensive executive branch reform bill introduced by House Democrats Wednesday would strengthen Congress' ability to check executive power in the future. The most sweeping set of reforms since Watergate comes at a time that Donald Trump is, quite literally, threatening to abandon the Constitution to retain power. So, yeah, these reforms are needed. If not three years too late.
Writing about the package in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, says that when Trump was inaugurated in 2017: "I was confident that our Constitution and democratic institutions, which had survived the Civil War, terrorist attacks, economic crises and more, could withstand an unscrupulous president." That changed, he continued. "What I did not foresee was the awful degree to which the party of the president would surrender its institutional responsibilities in order to protect its hold on power—and the extent to which this abdication would leave such a president unconstrained."
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He says that "Trump has sought to turn the instruments of government to his personal and political advantage, and to an astonishing degree, he has been successful." The "post-Trump" reform package does everything from limiting the president's power to declare emergencies and grant pardons to creating "a mechanism to enforce the constitutional prohibition on emoluments." It would allow for expedited enforcement of congressional subpoenas and fines to keep a president from running out the clock on oversight and strengthen whistleblower and inspector general protections. It would also beef up Congress' power of the purse, increasing penalties for officials who circumvent congressional appropriations or violate the Hatch Act with overt political activity. The package would also protect elections from foreign interference, Schiff writes. "Our reforms would require political campaigns to report to the FBI suspicious foreign contacts or offers of assistance, and clarify that dirt on an opponent is a 'thing of value' that campaigns are prohibited from soliciting or receiving from foreign powers."
In releasing the package, the seven committee chairs who crafted it released a statement in which they said that the legislation is intended to "prevent future presidential abuses, restore our checks and balances, strengthen accountability and transparency, and protect our elections."
"It is time for Congress to strengthen the bedrock of our democracy and ensure our laws are strong enough to withstand a lawless president," the statement says. "These reforms are necessary not only because of the abuses of this president, but because the foundation of our democracy is the rule of law and that foundation is deeply at risk." What the package cannot do is reform the Senate. Only the Senate can do that. The only way that that's happening is if we throw Sen. Mitch McConnell out of his leadership position.
Passing these reforms and having them signed by the next president—presuming the election goes our way—is one step. In parallel, Congress and the next Justice Department have to be willing to use the laws currently on the books to investigate and prosecute members of the Trump administration and campaign for what they've been doing for the last four years. The failure of the Obama administration to address any of the law-breaking in the Bush/Cheney regime, the failure to put any constraint at all on Republicans—especially McConnell—by prosecuting wrong-doing gave them license to put Trump in the White House and blow everything up.
So this is a really good start at, as Schiff alluded to by using the famous Ben Franklin quote, ensuring we "keep our republic." It's all necessary, but it's not sufficient. Democrats in charge of the next House and Senate and White House have to be as ruthless and as creative in rebuilding and Republican-proofing our republic as Republicans have been in dismantling it.