This prompted Democrats on the committee to introduce an amendment Tuesday that would’ve triggered a request for the tax returns to the Treasury Department. “Unless this amendment is adopted, we will never see the president's tax returns while he's in office,” Representative Sander Levin told his Republican colleagues. “Before you stonewall this, I urge you to think twice. You'll only keep the issue alive.”

Last year, after some of Trump’s worrying foreign conflicts were exposed, I argued that Congress cannot fulfill its constitutional duty to check and balance the next president, or provide adequate oversight of the federal agencies he presides over, without a full, accurate understanding of his business holdings and debts. I urged Americans to tell their representatives that they favor an exhaustive inquiry into Trump’s finances to determine exactly where his interests and ours diverge.

The amendment was rejected on a party-line vote by these 23 Republicans (the ones with asterisks next to their names represent relatively competitive districts; the others are thought to be in “safe seats” for the GOP, and only vulnerable in primaries):

The vote could come back to haunt these legislators if the tax returns eventually come to light and reveal something that American voters feel they should’ve known, especially given the weak rationale offered by Republicans in defense of the vote.

“If Congress begins to use its powers to rummage around in the tax returns of the president, what prevents Congress from doing the same to average Americans?” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told reporters, according to CNBC. “Privacy and civil liberties are still important rights in this country, and the Ways and Means Committee is not going to start to weaken them.”

This strikes me as wildly unpersuasive. First, the law was reportedly used decades ago in the special case of a corrupt president and no slippery slope seems to have been stepped on. Second, a bright-line question easily presents itself to keep Ways and Means off that slope: “Do we have a Constitutional responsibility to check, balance, and oversee the person whose tax return we are requesting?” That ought to be sufficient to protect “average Americans.” Third, how many “average Americans” would even care if Ways and Means pulled their tax return, which consists of information they’re already forced to give the federal government? Fourth, there are about six dozen steps congressional Republicans could take to end privacy abrogations that are orders of magnitude more intrusive than a remote threat of a future Congress voting to look at one’s tax returns! Take ending the NSA program that collects details on the private communications of almost everyone.