Rep. Kevin Brady is the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. As chairman in 2017, he pushed through the tax cuts that remain President Trump’s top legislative achievement. Now, he’s dealing with the role that Ways and Means might play in a possible Trump impeachment. (It is the only House committee that is permitted by law to demand the president’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service, and Democrats are currently taking steps to do just that.)
Brady and I discussed the committee’s role in the Trump investigations in a conversation for a new podcast Tuesday morning, but we started off with the news that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has come out (mostly) against impeachment. Pelosi told the Washington Post that impeachment is simply too divisive for the country, unless there are grounds that are “so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” that impeachment is justified.
Brady doesn’t believe her. “Respectfully, I don’t buy it,” he said. The reason, he explained, is not that he doubts Pelosi’s sentiments. It is that he doubts her ability to impose her will on House Democrats.
“The Speaker, while she controls the House, doesn’t control her own party,” Brady said. “And there is a real rush to impeachment here in the House. We’re seeing that with [Judiciary Committee chairman] Jerry Nadler, we’re seeing it with the investigative committees, we’re seeing it in the Ways and Means Committee.”
Brady pointed to recent moments when Democratic opposition forced Pelosi to back down from her personal positions. “The Speaker wasn’t for term limits; her party forced her to do it. She wasn’t for watering down the anti-Semitism resolution; her party forced her to do it. She’s not for Medicare-for-all; she says her party is forcing her to do it.”
Indeed, while no one knows the deepest feelings of each Democratic member, there is no doubt that Democratic voters, the ones who sent the current class to Congress, strongly favor impeachment. In exit polls from last November’s midterm elections, 77 percent of Democrats answered “Yes” to the question, “Should Congress impeach Trump?”
“She’s trying to tamp this down for political purposes, as she was before the election,” Brady said. “But her conference just seems hell-bent on this rush to impeachment.”
On the question of the president’s tax returns, there have been reports that Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Richard Neal has directed committee staff to prepare a request for the returns. The move could come at any time, setting off what is expected to be a legal fight if the administration refuses to hand them over.
“Democrats, in my view, if they weaponize the tax code to do this, they will set a dangerous precedent where future Congresses can do the same — compile an enemies list and go after them,” Brady said. “This isn’t about, should a president disclose their tax returns as part of running for office. You can feel yes or no, different views on that. This is whether Congress should abuse their authority to seize the tax returns of a private citizen.”
Brady conceded minority Republicans have no power to stop the move — all that is required is “a simple letter to Treasury saying, ‘I want to see these tax returns,'” he noted.
Brady went on to discuss a little-known IRS policy that requires the president’s and vice president’s tax returns to be audited every year. (From the IRS manual: “The individual income tax returns for the president and vice president are subject to mandatory examinations.”) That provision means Trump is already receiving sufficient scrutiny, Brady argued.
“The president and vice president are audited annually by the IRS,” he said. “Those returns, if there is a problem, there is both a criminal investigative unit within the IRS, and of course the FBI and the special counsel have access to it as well. So I think this [the House demanding the returns] is exactly the wrong thing to do.”
But that is what Democrats appear poised to do. Brady said he and Neal have talked “generally” about the tax return issue, but not about specifics. If — when — Democrats go ahead, look for Brady and his fellow Republicans to protest. But there’s nothing they can do about it.
