Photo : AP

Here is a fun anecdote from the Washington Post about House Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neal, one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress.


Neal is supposed to be leading the charge to get a hold of Donald Trump’s tax returns. This is a good idea for obvious reasons—there could be a lot of crazy and bad stuff in those returns. But, according to the Post, using his oversight powers to go after a far-right and deeply crooked president just makes Neal feel all icky. Emphasis mine:

Neal’s discomfort in confronting the Trump administration has been apparent in internal meetings of the Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, according to the House Democrat involved in oversight and an aide to a House lawmaker on the committee speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly without fear of professional repercussions. When discussing the subject of the tax returns, Neal frequently tells stories of bipartisan cooperation under former Ways and Means Committee leaders, particularly Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), pining for an era of political comity that others on the committee believe no longer exists, these people said. “You could just tell from his body language, and everything else since then, that he has no enthusiasm for dealing with the tax returns issue,” said one House Democratic lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly address the issue.


Cool! What’s really fun—besides a Democratic lawmaker not wanting to, y’know, actually do anything to challenge the awful Republican president currently in power—is that Dan Rostenkowski, the man Neal is apparently lauding so much, was a notoriously corrupt congressman who went to prison on fraud charges.

So, to sum up, Richard Neal is reluctant to unearth information about Donald Trump’s almost certainly massive corruption, and he just wishes things could get back to how they were when another massively corrupt person was running the show. Ladies and gentlemen, your Democratic Party.