Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) may have once been the driving force behind an impeachment inquiry in the House, but just as Democrats are digging in on President Donald Trump, it seems the “squad” leader is losing interest.
It turns out she believes the time to impeach Trump has long passed (though she was supportive of the House’s efforts just last week), and she wants Democrats to move on to more important issues, like the massive omnibus “economic justice” bill she just introduced.
“I think the whole thing is boring,” Ocasio-Cortez told constituents at a town hall event, according to the Washington Examiner. “He should have been impeached a long time ago. I’m over it. And so that’s how I feel about it because we’ve got work to do.”
Ocasio-Cortez may be a little sore because, despite Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-NY) submission to the progressive “squad’s” agenda, not a single one of the female freshman legislators are officially involved in the initial inquiry, probably by design. Ocasio-Cortez is no longer the center of attention on the matter.
It’s also clear that an inquiry may not lead to actual impeachment proceedings, especially if the whistleblowers’ claims don’t expose any actual quid-pro-quo agreement between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian officials with knowledge of former Vice President Joe Biden’s dealings in the eastern European country. No matter how desperately Ocasio-Cortez wants impeachment, it cannot be done without due process, per the edicts of the Constitution.
Instead, the freshman New York legislator has other progressive priorities on her mind. Last week, as the nation was preoccupied with Ukraine, she introduced a massive omnibus spending bill that she says will create a more “just society.”
Impeaching the president has no appeal, it seems, when she can spend more taxpayer money.
As the Daily Wire reported over the weekend, the bill package has six parts: a “place to prosper act” that would institute national rent control, an “uplift workers act” that would mandate a national $15 minimum wage along with other union-friendly protections, a “mercy in re-entry” act that would extend public benefits to people released from prison, an ambiguous “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for All” act, a change in the Federal definition of “poverty” that could include those families making up to $40,000 per year, an an “embrace act” that would extend all Federal benefits to non-citizens.
In case it’s not clear, the bill defines “Federal benefits” rather broadly:
Any grant, contract, loan, professional license, or commercial license provided by an agency of the United States or by appropriated funds of the United States; and … any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, postsecondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of the United States or by appropriated funds of the United States.
If the package sounds like an extreme spending bill, that’s because it is. It comes with no price tag attached, only a guarantee that a tax hike on the wealthy will somehow pay for it all, even though those same wealthy would also be taxed for Ocasio-Cortez’s other proposed programs, like the Green New Deal, which could cost taxpayers as much as $93 trillion over the first decade.