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Richard J. Kessler is a retired congressional staff member. He is currently chair of the Sagadahoc County Democratic Party.
Democrats are mad. So are independents and even some Republicans. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are drawing huge crowds.
Despite demands that congressional Democrats do something, Congress seems powerless. But that is not the case.
By being in the minority in both houses of Congress, Democrats are constrained. They have only one-third the budget, one-third the office space, and therefore one-third the staff of the Republican majority. They cannot hold committee hearings and they can’t issue subpoenas without concurrence of the majority.
And yet, Democratic members still have a voice which can resonate, and that is by using the tools available to them to investigate and report to the American people.
Democrats should consider establishing a bicameral Committee to Preserve and Strengthen Our Democracy and Economy. Existing committees could provide staff, and the Senate and House leadership have additional funds they could commit.
There are multiple targets to investigate including preserving the integrity of our military, a non-partisan civil service, and independent judiciary; ensuring our health; maintaining our agriculture; safeguarding our privacy and liberty; and saving our environment. These issues are not partisan. There is no reason not to include Republicans in this effort. It could be the basis for a new national consensus about the basic purpose of government.
The Democratic leadership could form bipartisan advisory committees to identify common goals. Former Sen. John Danforth has already launched a new organization called Our Republican Legacy to do something similar. Former Vice President Mike Pence is also speaking out. There are many conservative Republicans appalled at what Trump is doing and who want to preserve our democracy. While the number of targets of opportunity are multiplying daily, I don’t see any committee in Congress meeting its responsibility to investigate.
At the same time that our essential democratic institutions are being eroded, we should know if and to what extent federal financial oversight and government procurement have been manipulated to the personal benefit of billionaires and administration insiders. There are indications that safeguards — both legally and constitutionally put in place to prevent corruption — are being perverted and that we are on the verge of a scandal even bigger than the Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s.
Addressing conflicts of interest and corruption is hard to do now, given the dismantlement of systems that we had in place to address these ethics issues, such as the Office of Special Counsel, agency ethics officers, the inspectors general, the Department of Justice. Given the demand by President Donald Trump that all agencies be subservient to his will and whim, we can no longer count on the government acting fairly and impartially. Perhaps the laws and agencies we have to deal with corruption cases have now been corrupted beyond repair.
Digging into these issues, committee staff could have free-standing “hearings” and call as witnesses finance and procurement specialists, ethicists, accountants, and potentially whistleblowers. Yes, the lack of subpoena power makes it challenging to gather information, but it is not impossible.
Democrats have other instruments to assist in these investigations. The most prominent is the Government Accountability Office (GAO) but there is also the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which can prepare background papers. There is another resource: all the retired GAO investigators and similar former federal employees, including former inspectors generals and FBI agents, many of whom would likely eagerly volunteer their expertise to root out waste, fraud and corruption in the administration.
The investigations can turn to multiple sources of public information, including, public data from federal financial reporting requirements, campaign finance documents, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, and outside political contributions. Taking a closer look at who is running our government, especially now when so many civil servants have been fired and replaced by partisan unknowns, is critical to preserve accountability.
Democrats do have powerful tools they can use to bring the accountability the Republicans refuse to pursue.
