Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Monday that he will make good on his promise to remove three high-profile Democrats from their House committees.
McCarthy said that he would move to strip Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar of their assignments as payback for the party ousting Republican Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene from their panels during the last Congress.
“Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector. I’m not going to give him a government security clearance. Schiff has lied to the American public,” McCarthy told The Associated Press.
Schiff and Swalwell would be removed from the House Intelligence Committee, while Minnesota’s Omar would be taken out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The Republican House leader previously vowed to remove the trio of Democrats if Republicans were to take control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections.
“The Democrats have created a new thing where they’re picking and choosing who could be on committee,” McCarthy said last January. “Never in the history [of Congress] have you had the majority tell the minority who could be on committee, but this new standard, which these Democrats have voted for — if Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the private sector, there’s no reason why he should be given one to be on Intel or Homeland Security.”
This comes after the House of Representatives voted on Monday to rescind more than $70 billion in funding to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), fulfilling McCarthy’s promise to prevent the hiring of tens of thousands of new agents to audit Americans.
In a 221-210 vote, the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act passed the House of Representatives. The bill, which is sponsored by Reps. Adrian Smith and Michelle Steel, would rescind all funds that would increase the IRS’ size by twofold and may be used to carry out further audits of Americans.
“House Republicans just voted unanimously to repeal the Democrats’ army of 87,000 IRS agents. This was our very first act of the new Congress, because [the] government should work for you, not against you. Promises made. Promises kept,” McCarthy after the vote.
The bill will now go to the Democrat-controlled Senate, where it has little chance of progress amid opposition from the Biden administration.
