When the new Congress convenes in January, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) will be replaced by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) as chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the main investigative committee in the House of Representatives. If you’re curious about Cummings’s qualifications for the post, consider some of his past actions.
Take, for instance, his emails in 2012 and 2013 to then-IRS Exempt Organizations Unit chief Lois Lerner requesting (and receiving) confidential tax information on True the Vote, a conservative PAC. Or his claim in 2013 that the Postal Service’s decision to eliminate Saturday delivery was racist.
But why look to the distant past when the congressman’s appearance this past Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” provides a window into the his qualifications. Cummings told host Chuck Todd that the migrants who stormed the border at the San Ysidro port of entry should be permitted to enter the U.S., claiming “That’s the law.”
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EXCLUSIVE: @RepCummings says he does not support a potential deal where asylum-seekers coming through Mexico would stay in Mexico until their court date in the United States. #MTP
Cummings: "That's not the law. They should be allowed to come in, seek asylum, that's the law." pic.twitter.com/nAsKKCLM3f
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) November 25, 2018
He went on to add:
I think we have a system that has worked for a long time. This president’s come in, wants to change it. That’s up to him. But now the Congress has got to stand up, and hopefully they will.
Based on caravan members’ actions early Sunday, which included hurling stones and bottles at border patrol agents and using toddlers as human shields, does Cummings honestly believe they will march onto American soil in orderly fashion once the border is flung open?
He seems to be oblivious, moreover, to the fact that immigration court backlog of migrant family seeking asylum is now some 700,000 cases long. Authorities estimate that it will take at least five years to vet those cases.
