Last updated on January 5th, 2019 at 05:53 am
Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters is already responding to critics who claim Democrats are going to spend too much time investigating Donald Trump‘s corruption.
Waters, the first woman and first African-American chair of the House Financial Services Committee, says she is fully capable of investigating Trump and doing the people’s work at the same time.
In a clip aired on MSNBC on Thursday, Waters pledged that “some” of her time will be spent investigating Trump, but that doesn’t mean Democrats will ignore important policy priorities meant to boost the middle class.
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“For those who say I’m going to spend all of my time trying to get subpoenas and trying to do investigations, and I’m not going to do that,” the Democratic lawmaker said. “I’m just going to spend some of my time.”
She told Chris Hayes that her other major focus will be on undoing the damage that the Trump administration has done to consumer protections enacted under Barack Obama.
“We have to be very clear that we have lots of responsibilities in this committee and as you know, I’ve been focused on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” she said. “I’m going to focus on that and we’re going to try and undo the damage that Mulvaney has done.”
Video:
Maxine Waters explains how Democrats will use their majority in the House to hold the president accountable and fight for smart consumer protections. #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/uHrElHvkVO
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 4, 2019
Waters explained the work she will champion on the House Financial Services Committee:
First of all, we have to be very clear that we have lots of responsibilities in this committee and as you know, I’ve been focused on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That was the centerpiece of the Dodd/Frank reform. And, of course, Mulvaney who was sent over temporarily by the president to oversee it after the guy who headed it left to run for governor. And he’s tried to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And before we got the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Dodd/Frank legislation, consumers had no real protection. Nobody was looking out for them. And so this is extremely important. I’m going to focus on that and we’re going to try and undo the damage that Mulvaney has done. Fair housing, the GSE’s, that is Fannie and Freddie. We have all of that work to do. So we’re going to do our work.
Democrats planning an “all of the above” approach
Democrats have made the decision to strike a smart balance between fighting for policies to help the middle class and holding Donald Trump accountable for his potential criminal conduct.
As Maxine Waters said on Thursday, they don’t need to choose between the two; they can do both. In fact, that’s exactly why the American people sent them to Washington last November.
While Republicans couldn’t even keep the lights on with control of all levers of power, the new Democratic majority is planning to get the government firing on all cylinders – from holding Trump accountable to fighting to policies that benefit the cheated middle class.
As Maxine Waters said on Thursday, “We’re going to do our work.”
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
