The Trump coverup no one is talking about: The emperor has no money.

E. J. Dionne points out that Trump has no control over the purse strings, and that severely limits his power to negotiate anything with the Democratic House.

"From the moment Trump, Pelosi and Schumer announced their convergence on a $2 trillion infrastructure plan last month, Mulvaney began sabotaging it. “Is it difficult to pass any infrastructure bill in this environment, let alone a $2 trillion one, in this environment? Absolutely,” Mulvaney said.

He was far from alone because the entire Republican leadership in Congress is now part of the Knuckledraggers Caucus. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly signaled that he had absolutely no interest in a big infrastructure plan if it required rolling back any part of the GOP’s 2017 corporate tax cut.

Democrats argue that because business is clamoring for infrastructure, it would make sense to ask business to foot part of the bill. They have suggested raising the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from the 21 percent enshrined in the 2017 law and pulling back on some of its other provisions.

No way, say the Republicans. A “nonstarter,” declared McConnell. Faced with the choice of bridges collapsing in a heap or reining in the tax giveaways, the bridges don’t have much of a chance.

Note that the meeting Trump sabotaged was about how to finance the plan. He had no way of coming up with anything constructive because, for all of his bravado, he is totally under the thumb of Congress’s conservative ideologues. His tantrum was part of the coverup no one is talking about: The emperor has no money."

The nation should thank Justin Amash.

from Eugne Robinson's column in this morning's Washington Post.

Justin Amash finally said out loud what many other Republicans know but will only whisper: “President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.” Amash’s party may never forgive him. His nation ought to thank him...Amash wrote in a series of tweets that he reached his conclusion “only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff, who thoroughly reviewed materials and provided me with further analysis.”

That sounds like the sort of thing we pay elected officials and their staff members to do. But Amash wrote that few of his colleagues “even read Mueller’s report; their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation.”

That’s actually a key point. Anyone who reads the 448-page report can see, as Amash concludes, that Attorney General William P. Barr — in his four-page summary, his congressional testimony and other statements — “intended to mislead the public” about Mueller’s findings. Barr apparently “hopes people will not notice” his deception, Amash said . Busted

...In the Mueller report, Amash finds “multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice.” Impeachment, Amash noted, “does not even require probable cause that a crime . . . has been committed,” but simply that an official “has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct.” Trump does all of the above, all of the time

...But here is a line from Amash’s tweetstorm that Democrats should reflect on: “While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-may-never-forgive-justin-amash-the-nation-should-thank-him/2019/05/20/5cd89f30-7b3f-11e9-a5b3-34f3edf1351e_story.html?utm_term=.490b91814200