With the House of Representatives under their control, Congressional Republicans are going all out to take on the Biden administration. On top of plans to block Democrat-sponsored legislation, the GOP has launched a string of investigations with the ultimate aim of impeaching President Biden.
As the GOP enters full-on attack mode, read on to discover exactly what the Republicans are doing to undermine the Democrats and make President Biden's life hell, and why they could even trigger "financial Armageddon."
House Democrats rushed to get as much legislation as they could through the chamber at the end of last year, and for good reason.
Among them were the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill and the Respect for Marriage Act. The latter enshrines federal protections for same-sex and interracial unions.
With the Republican Party now in control of the legislative agenda and effectively calling the shots, the chances of Democratic lawmakers seeing their bills passed have been massively reduced.
Yet Democrats have so far failed to pass laws protecting abortion and voting rights on a federal level, with other priorities, including the reform of gun control regulations and Child Tax Credit, also falling by the wayside.
Hindered by Republican adversaries, the president has only been able to fulfil a quarter of his 100 most important campaign pledges according to PolitiFact's Biden Promise Tracker.
Needless to say, House Republicans intend to block pretty much every piece of Democrat-sponsored legislation from making it to the Senate.
By the same token, the Democrat-controlled Senate is likely to vote down the bulk of Republican-backed bills that have cleared the House, meaning that both parties are hugely restricted in what they can get passed.
However, President Biden can fall back on executive actions to advance some of the party's legislative agenda.
Unable to pass laws, the GOP is focusing on other ways to undermine the Biden administration and clip the wings of the Democratic Party's lawmakers.
In fact, House Republicans have stated that their number one priority is to investigate the administration, which they say could result in the impeachment of the president and even members of his cabinet.
Now in charge of the House's 26 committees with the authority to issue subpoenas, Republican representatives have already used their recently acquired power to launch a number of investigations.
In order to get elected, polarizing Speaker Kevin McCarthy ended up having to dole out plum committee roles to the party's more extreme members, many of whom are election deniers, including James Comer, Jim Jordan, and the outspoken conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene.
With the MAGA far-right in the driving seat, the Democratic Party can expect a bumpy ride.
On 10 January, Comer, the newly-appointed chair of the Oversight Committee on which Greene has also landed a seat, kicked off a wide-ranging probe into the business affairs of President Biden and his family.
This included the president's scandal-hit son Hunter Biden, who's already the subject of a federal investigation.
Comer had been vowing to conduct the probe for months, having obtained the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.
The Kentucky congressman has got the ball rolling by demanding the Treasury hand over information on the Biden family's finances. And yesterday (8 February), Comer and his fellow Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee took testimony from Twitter employees, with Republicans alleging that the social network platform censored a negative news story about Hunter in October 2020.
Many Republicans allege that the executives were pressured into the move by Democrats and law enforcement.
The story, which appeared in the New York Post in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, alleged that in April 2019 Hunter Biden dropped off his laptop at a computer repair store in Wilmington, North Carolina, and that the hard drive revealed evidence of corruption involving his father.
Speaking yesterday, Comer asserted, without evidence, that "America witnessed a coordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news and the intelligence communities to suppress and de-legitimized [sic] the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents."
Under grilling from Comer and his fellow Republicans, the former Twitter executives conceded that blocking links to the New York Post story for 24 hours was a mistake – but they flatly denied any involvement of government officials.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s ex-Head of Trust and Safety, asserted that there was confusion at the time over how to handle the story, given fears that the story could have come from a hostile foreign government hoping to influence the approaching election. This, Roth claimed, was why publication of the story was suspended. Many Republicans won't be convinced...
Heightened scrutiny of the Biden family's business dealings could prove a major headache for the president but, as we've mentioned, that's only one of several probes currently shining a spotlight on the Biden administration.
The same day Comer got his Biden family investigation approved, the House greenlit two other inquiries: one exploring the origins of COVID-19, and the other examining America's competitive relationship with China.
Headed by Wisconsin GOP representative Mike Gallagher, the US-China investigation has bipartisan support and is uncontroversial.
However, the probe into the origins of COVID-19 is another story entirely. This special subcommittee of the Oversight and Energy & Commerce Committee, which is led by Washington Republican congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, is highly contentious.
Regarded by critics as a tool for the GOP to lambast the Biden administration's handling of the pandemic, the investigation is setting out to determine whether the COVID-19 virus originally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
It will also scrutinize whether or not President Biden's Chief Medical Advisor Dr Anthony Fauci (pictured) was involved in a cover-up.
On the same day the trio of probes began, GOP firebrand Jim Jordan (pictured), who was recently appointed chair of the Judiciary Committee, had the ominous-sounding Weaponization of Government Subcommittee approved by the House.
The subcommittee is looking into whether the FBI, the Justice Department, and other government agencies have been politicized and are curtailing civil liberties.
The GOP is alleging that there's a bias toward the left. They've cited examples of purported efforts to persecute Republicans, such as coming down overly hard on President Trump and Critical Race Theory protestors at school board meetings.
A probe into the alleged mistreatment of the Capitol Hill riot defendants is also high on the agenda, according to Jordan.
Other hard-right committee members, such as Oversight's Marjorie Taylor Greene, have also called for an investigation. At present, however, the Weaponization of Government Subcommittee is leading the way.
Democratic lawmakers have taken to nicknaming it the "tin foil hat committee" and "Select Committee on Insurrection Protection."
The investigative panel is seen as a stinging rebuke to the January 6 Committee, which the GOP wasted no time in shutting down when the party gained control of the House. The subcommittee has also been allocated a similar level of funding.
Two days after the Weaponization of Government Subcommittee sprang into action, Texas Republican congressman Michael McCaul, the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, launched an investigation into the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021.
McCaul has already released a damning report on the exit and is currently busy gathering further evidence from the State Department.
The Armed Services and Oversight Committees are also getting involved, with the investigation examining everything from the planning process to the failure to rescue Afghan personnel.
One of the most concerning probes for the Biden administration, it has the potential to make the government appear both weak and ineffectual. And the investigations just keep on coming...
On 13 January, Jordan flexed his Judiciary Committee muscles by launching an investigation into the president's mishandling of classified documents.
Dating back to the Obama administration, the top-secret paperwork was recently discovered at Biden's former DC office, as well as at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The scandal has the potential to undermine the Justice Department's investigation into President Trump's misuse of more than 300 secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, with Republicans lining up to slam the Biden administration for rank hypocrisy.
In the words of GOP lawmaker Don Bacon, as quoted by The Washington Post: "If you live in a glass house, do not throw stones."
Be that as it may, Republicans may have to tread carefully as they too could be accused of hypocrisy by those on the other side of the aisle.
Many in the party were quick to dismiss the Justice Department investigation into President Trump's own mishandling of classified documents as a "witch hunt" – including the former POTUS himself.
Allegations that they're mounting a similar probe of their own could wear away at the GOP's credibility.
Also adding to the Biden administration's woes is the GOP's multi-pronged investigation into the crisis at the southern border. On its website, the Committee on Oversight & Accountability describes it as "the worst border crisis in American history."
Again, more than one committee is scrutinizing the situation, with Comer's Oversight Committee, Jordan's Judiciary Committee, and the Homeland Security Committee, which is headed up by Tennessee GOP representative Mark Green, all getting involved.
Hearings on the crisis are imminent, and could even result in the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Earlier this week, Republican lawmakers filed a resolution to have Mayorkas impeached, their second attempt to do so less than one month into the new Congress.
In a press release announcing the move, the resolution's sponsor Republican Andy Biggs described Mayorkas as the "chief architect of the migration and drug invasion at our southern border."
A cabinet member hasn't been impeached since William Belknap in 1876 (Belknap, who served as secretary of war, was later acquitted), and the move would be a serious blow to the Biden administration.
That said, Mayorkas has little chance of being convicted by the Democrat-controlled Senate and critics have derided the proceedings as a waste of both time and energy.
In addition to launching a barrage of investigations into the Biden administration, the GOP is undermining the Democratic Party in other ways.
One tactic that House Republicans are employing to mess with their opponents and upend their legislative agenda is the removal of left-wing Democratic representatives from key committees.
During a private meeting last November, the now-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy vowed that he would eject Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee. And that's exactly what he and his fellow Republicans have now done.
Republican lawmakers voted to remove Omar from her committee post, alleging that the move was punishment for her past remarks about Israel. But the Democrats are unconvinced, asserting that her expulsion was really revenge for the ousting of Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their own committee posts in February and November 2021 respectively.
Following her committee ejection, an indignant Omar asked: "Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy?"
This may not be the end of GOP efforts to oust their rivals. CNN has also reported that McCarthy stated that he'd boot California congressmen Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the Intelligence Committee.
McCarthy has publicly confirmed that he'll make good on his pre-midterms promise, so the removal of the Democratic trio is almost a done deal.
However, the tactic could backfire with the American public, some of whom might view it as petty and unnecessarily divisive.
The GOP has come up with other cunning strategies to thwart the president, his administration, and Democratic lawmakers.
On 10 January, for example, CNN's Annie Grayer posted this photo on Twitter that was taken at a private Republican meeting and shows the party's budget and spending priorities for the 118th Congress.
The slide outlines plans to "reform budget processes and mandatory spending programs," which would involve cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and more.
It also states that Republican lawmakers will force the Biden administration to bend to their demands by using the debt ceiling and risk of default as leverage.
This defunding strategy could threaten a number of flagship Biden administration policies, including its climate change agenda.
The tactic could also prove instrumental in the GOP achieving its goal of disempowering the IRS, which Republican lawmakers believe has huge overreach. House Republicans recently passed legislation to block new IRS funding, which has no chance of becoming law.
As the new chair of the influential Ways & Means Committee, Missouri GOP congressman Jason Smith is going all out to probe the revenue service, although the defunding drive could prove a more effective ploy.
Nevertheless, holding the government to ransom is playing with fire and could be disastrous for the GOP, as well as the country. A stand-off could result in a debt default, which the party would likely be blamed for.
With a summer showdown looming, there's a real possibility that the US government could default on its debt and trigger "financial Armageddon," top economists warn.
The consequences could range from a prolonged government shutdown to deep recession, mass job losses, a weaker dollar, and crashing stock market, with the fallout reverberating around the world and battering the global economy.
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