Health Care, Gun Control, And Other Legislation Should Be Prioritized Over Trump Investigations, Incoming Dems Say
The message was delivered in a letter that 46 House freshmen to the Democratic leadership team. Their request for a bipartisan focus on legislation is one of several. Others include holding monthly meetings between top leaders and freshmen and more committee hearings held outside of Washington. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, in a nod to the new power structure in Congress, has begun reaching out to Democrats.
The Associated Press:
Freshmen House Dems Prefer Bills Over Investigations
Forty-six newly elected House Democrats pressed party leaders Monday to focus next year on legislative priorities like health care and infrastructure over investigations of President Donald Trump and his administration. "We must heed the call from our constituents," the group wrote in a letter to their leadership. The letter demonstrates how the huge class of freshman Democrats in the new Congress hopes to use its clout. (12/3)
The Washington Post:
Trump Begins Making Overtures To Democrats Amid Skepticism It Will Lead To Any Deals
President Trump, facing a Congress that will become dramatically more antagonistic toward him in January, has begun courting Democrats who could determine whether his next two years are spent scoring legislative deals or staving off an onslaught of congressional investigations. Trump’s charm offensive was on display Monday when he hosted Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) at the White House for a meeting that the two men had spent days trying to schedule. (Kim and Dawsey, 12/3)
In other news, a "Medicare For All" claim is fact-checked —
The New York Times Fact Check:
The Misleading Claim That $21 Trillion In Misspent Pentagon Funds Could Pay For ‘Medicare For All’
Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who has become a darling of the progressive left, was quoting from an article in The Nation about “massive accounting fraud” committed by the Pentagon from 1998 to 2015. But her suggestion that the $21 trillion in military transactions could have “already” paid two-thirds the cost of a “Medicare for all” health care system goes beyond what the article reported — and is misleading. For starters, the combined Pentagon budget from 1998 to 2015 was $9.2 trillion. One study by a libertarian economic think tank found that “Medicare for all” legislation by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, would cost the federal government $32.6 trillion over 10 years. So where did the $21 trillion figure originate? (Qiu, 12/3)