Central Florida Dems want to hold Trump accountable in new Congress
Central Florida’s congressional delegation is gaining more power, and they have ambitious plans to use it.
When the region’s three freshman Democrats were elected together to the U.S. House in 2016, they joined a Republican-controlled Congress that allowed limited opportunities for them to get bills passed and few options to check the power of the White House.
But after Democrats gained 40 seats in November, control of the chamber has flipped. U.S. Reps. Stephanie Murphy, Darren Soto and Val Demings are returning to a House controlled by their party, with plum roles on committees and the power of the subpoena.
“It’s really been 12 years in the minority [for me],” said Soto, D-Kissimmee, who served in the GOP-controlled state Legislature before coming to Washington. “I’m pretty excited about the ability to use [my] skills now finally in the majority.”
The three all have issues they want to advance, including health care, gun safety and the environment.
But with Republicans still in control of the Senate and Donald Trump as president, they realize the GOP could block any Democratic legislation coming out of the House. So the lower chamber’s best move will be to use its oversight authority to investigate the Trump administration, they said.
“Who would have ever thought that we would be confronted with a situation where the president of the United States is at the center of, and has really shaken the very foundations, of our purpose and mission on the Judiciary Committee?” asked Demings, D-Orlando, who was named to the key panel in late 2017.
Besides vowing to protect Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian influence in the election, Demings said the conviction of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in New York also needed to be looked at by the committee.
Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations for orchestrating payments to two women before the 2016 election to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump, which Cohen and prosecutors said was done with the president’s knowledge.
Demings said the Judiciary Committee also will focus on gun violence, criminal justice reform and privacy issues for companies such as Google and Facebook, but “if the outcome of the special counsel’s investigation causes us to look at impeachment, we have a direct responsibility to do that.”
“I do believe that if Donald Trump was not the president of the United States, if he was anybody else, he would already be indicted by now,” Demings said. “I certainly believe a sitting president can be indicted. But if the decision is made outside of the Judiciary Committee different from that, and the only option left on the table is to begin an impeachment process, then I believe we have a direct obligation.”
Soto and Murphy, DWinter Park, were more cautious, with Murphy saying the Mueller investigation needed to be able to make conclusions “without interference,” while Soto said “should there be high crimes, that would pave the way for a potential impeachment vote. But that has to play itself out, and we’ll review the evidence as it does.”
Demings also wants to look at Trump’s tax returns and investigate the other scandals that she said Republicans have “turned a blind eye” to, including former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price’s resignation in 2017 over alleged misuse of government funds.
“How many people in the Trump administration have basically left under cover of darkness?” Demings said. “We have to go back and look at the mishandling of those investigations.”
Murphy also was critical of the GOP House’s “lack of willingness … to challenge or question or provide any kind of oversight to this administration,” said she wants to make sure the administration is actually moving forward on one of her major policy victories in 2018, ending the decadeslong ban on federal money being used to research gun violence.
Soto said there were a number of administration actions the House could now investigate where “before, they got a pass,” including handling of national monuments by the Department of Interior, oil drilling off the coasts, compliance with the Paris Climate Accords and “sabotaging the Affordable Care Act or undercutting education and rights for victims of sexual assault.”
Murphy, the head of the moderate Blue Dog Caucus and the Future Forum of young House members, said she wanted Congress to be more responsive to the issues of Millennials, who have in the past been less engaged politically than their elders.
One is the status of “Dreamers,” or mostly younger people brought into the country illegally as children, Murphy said Republicans “shouldn’t hold Dreamers hostage just to be able to score cheap political points. … I think it’s time we moved past these ad hoc immigration actions.”
Soto said Democrats should pass bills providing pathways to citizenship for Dreamers and for people in the U.S. on Temporary Protected Status, which is being stripped for people from Haiti and other Caribbean and South American countries but is being sought for Venezuelans by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.
“[We can] utilize our leverage to negotiate with the Senate for security and technology that does not include a wall, and potentially end up with a compromise bill,” Soto said.
Demings wanted to use the recent criminal justice reform bill passed by the GOP Congress and signed by Trump as a jumping-off point for further reform.
“To make this process complete, we also need to look at police accountability, look at everything from hiring to training and try to identify those areas where we can maybe come up with some uniform standards through the federal government,” said Demings a former Orlando police chief. “It’s all about continuing to build trust and relationships between the community and the police.’’
All three said they believed an infrastructure bill
rebuild the nation’s crumbling bridges and roads – long a stated goal of the Trump administration but continually delayed – was something the divided government could agree on.
“I really thought the president and the Republican-controlled House would start there [in 2017],” Demings said. “So I think a great place to start, kick off the new year, would be with an infrastructure package.” benefits BASE Camp Children’s Cancer Foundation. 9 p.m. Monday, Orchid Garden at Church Street Station, 225 S. Garland Ave., Orlando, $150, eventbrite.com.
Eve: 7 p.m. Monday, Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant, Disney Springs, 1640 E. Buena Vista Drive, Lake Buena Vista, free, 407-938-0300.
gala with dancing and live entertainment. 7:30 p.m. Monday, The Edison, Disney Springs, 1640 E. Buena Vista Drive, Lake Buena Vista, $150 (21 and older), patinagroup.com.
Ball: German and European music, buffet and balloon drop. 5 p.m. Monday, German American Society of Central Florida, 381 Orange
Ring In The New Year: 11 a.m. Monday, Main Event Entertainment, 9101 International Drive, Suite 1032, Orlando, $10.95, 407-352-3300.