Friday, December 06, 2019

Billy Long: We cannot afford to ignore pressing matters for the sake of an impeachment witch hunt

(From Seventh District Congressman Billy Long)

On January 20, 2017, the Washington Post’s headline read “the Campaign to Impeach President Trump has Begun,” before President-Elect Trump had even placed his hand on the Bible.

This headline would go on to perfectly summarize the Democrats crusade to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and proves that for Democrats, impeachment has always been their ultimate goal. 

Since Speaker Pelosi announced that she was launching an impeachment inquiry, the House has become fixated on this circus, unable to do the work Americans hired us to do: legislate. 

As legislation has come grinding to a halt and Democrats turned their focus exclusively to impeachment, the American people will be the ones to pay the ultimate price as the legislation they want collects dust on the Speaker’s desk.








We are in the final days of the first session of the 116th Congress, yet we have only passed 77 bills compared to the average of 417 bills passed in previous Congresses over the past twenty years. 

The Democrats’ obsession with impeachment has brought the House to a screeching halt, with countless hours being dedicated to hearings filled with hearsay rather than considering legislation. 

Unfortunately, the American people are the ones who suffer from this the most, forced to listen to divisive rhetoric rather than see the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) ratified, the passage of a bipartisan drug pricing bill or improved security on our southern border.

Over a year ago, President Trump signed the USMCA, and it is up to Congress to ratify the trade deal. 

Despite its wide bipartisan support and an initially promising remark that Speaker Pelosi was on a “pathway to yes," very little progress has been made. 

Last week, Mexican President Obrador penned an open letter to the Speaker urging her to ratify this deal, as Mexico and Canada are in a holding pattern until each country’s legislative branch passes it. 

His letter came on the heels of the Speaker’s announcement that despite having had over a year to bring USMCA to a vote, the House would not be voting on USMCA this year. This trade agreement is estimated to create over 175,000 new jobs as well as generate billions in revenue, yet it seems that for the Speaker and her colleagues, impeachment is their sole priority. 

Given that Mexico and Canada are our two biggest partners in trade and support countless jobs across our country, we cannot afford to put this carefully crafted agreement on the back burner.

Unfortunately, many other critical issues are also taking a backseat to this impeachment inquiry. 

Americans have widely expressed a desire to see Congress tackle prescription drug pricing, one of the few issues Democrats and Republicans agree on. 








We had the willing participants and the framework to draft bipartisan legislation to address this issue, but Speaker Pelosi scuttled bipartisan talks. Further, we’ve made little progress on border security, denying U.S. Customs and Border Patrol the resources they desperately need and allowing our crisis at the border to go unchecked.

It is incredibly frustrating to see pressing issues like the crisis at our border, drug pricing, and ratifying USMCA fall by the wayside in favor of an unfounded impeachment inquiry. 

House Democrats have been obsessed with overturning the outcome of the 2016 election, and have consequently neglected their duties to the American people to legislate. We cannot afford to ignore pressing matters for the sake of a witch hunt, and I will continue to work with my Republican colleagues to urge the Speaker to pass bills the American people care about.

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The first signing for The Buck Starts Here: Harry S. Truman and the City of Lamar will be held tonight (Thursday, December 5) from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Mary K. Finley Library in Lamar.
The book is also available at the Lamar Democrat office and can be purchased online in paperback or as an e-book from Amazon at the links below.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous1:27 PM

    What, you worry about pressing matters? Must have run out of ribs in Vegas. Your party has had years to do something for the country with infrastructure and here it is, nada. What a joke and I just feel sorry for your citizens if they believe this drivel you hand out. Jeez

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