VOA常速英语:特朗普与国会的对抗实为两党的暗中角力

Congress is a check on the White House, often sparking confrontation between the two.
The administration has decided that they are not going to honor their oath of office.
A confrontation about congressional oversight that Democratic lawmakers say has now crossed the line into something much more serious.
We are now in it. We are now in a constitutional crisis. But the US Constitution is vague about the balance of power between the two branches of government, leaving voters wondering. There’s some kind of crisis for sure. I can’t say exactly whether it would qualify as a constitutional crisis or not.

Trump has tested the limits of presidential power before declaring a national emergency after Congress refused to pay for a US-Mexico border wall. But in a tweet he said, Democrats are the problem, a view supported by his own party.
The only crisis we have is the majority of this Congress. 66 percent of American voters in a recent Quinnipiac University poll said House Democrats should not impeach the president. I think it’s much ado about nothing. I personally I think that the when whoever’s in power, squeals loudly about the other side. It came from the one side now. It’s the other.
The system of government set up by the Constitution has been challenged before when Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors, and earlier, when confrontation between free and slave-owning states started the civil war.

In the case of subpoenas for the Trump administration, scholars say Congress has wide authority.
Congress can’t violate the Constitution in terms of forcing people to testify against their Fifth Amendment rights which is against self-incrimination, but in terms of the content of the material, they really do have broad power.
Now, the President may assert executive privilege. This is something I predicted about five months ago when the Congress shift hands. Presidents do assert executive privilege but the Supreme Court has indicated that it’s fairly narrow.
The third branch of government, the judiciary, could provide clarity. The real constitutional crisis will be is if a federal judge orders that the president or people working for the President or private parties are ordered to produce the materials after a full hearing and the president orders people not to do it.
A refusal that could change the minds of voters. It’s dividing our country so deeply and if some transparency could shed light on everything that’s in there and perhaps we can move forward.
Who say they just want to see a working government.
Catherine Jibsen VOA news Capitol Hill