Pelosi should call for House vote on inquiry

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held off Tuesday night from scheduling a vote of the full House on whether to authorize the ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

The vote would be little more than procedural, she said, as it would confer negligible enhanced powers to committee chairs.

Currently six bipartisan standing committees — judiciary, oversight and reform, foreign affairs, financial services, and ways and means — are interviewing witnesses and gathering information about the president’s alleged withholding of $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for help in the 2020 presidential election. 

After the committees feel they have gone down all the rabbit holes will they decide whether they have enough credible information to say the president has betrayed the public’s trust and should be removed from office. 

If they get to that point, the judiciary committee will draft articles of impeachment. 

It’s only then that the full House will vote on whether it wants to charge the president as such. A simple majority vote is required by the House before it proceeds to a hearing before the Senate. At such a trial, the House will present its case, the president’s team plead his, and Senators will have the ultimate decision. 

This process of oversight is crucial to our democratic form of government of checks and balances, ensuring that one branch does not have undue power. 

CONGRESS does not require a vote by the full House to conduct this investigation, according to the U.S. Constitution. That’s because the House is inherently responsible for getting the ball rolling with an investigation, so there’s no need to call for a vote asking itself for permission.

The same is true for the ability to issue subpoenas, demanding someone’s appearance or information they may have, as well as taking depositions. These powers come with the duties of serving on the investigating committees.

The president contends otherwise, saying the impeachment inquiry is “constitutionally invalid.”

He’s wrong. And he’s using bad information in advising U.S. diplomats, White House staff and cabinet members to ignore requests for information and testimony.

THE ONLY argument for Pelosi to call for a full vote by the House to conduct a formal impeachment inquiry are the optics. And they matter.

Enough Americans believe the investigation is shrouded in secrecy — which, up to a certain point, it should be to protect witnesses and whistleblowers — and obfuscation that the integrity of the process is damaged. 

A majority vote by members of the full House formally calling for the inquiry would not only assuage their fears, but also instill trust in the proceedings.

No, the Constitution doesn’t require such a vote. But it could go a long way in facilitating cooperation — which is in short supply.

What’s holding Democrats back is the fear that voters would not distinguish between authorizing the impeachment inquiry and voting for impeachment itself, and voters in swing districts would punish Democrats come the 2020 election.