You gotta love Rep. Adam Schiff.
The Democratic lawmaker who spearheaded the impeachment probe of Forever-Impeached President Donald Trump is pre-pushing for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to probe the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Once we’ve recovered, we need a nonpartisan commission to review our response and how we can better prepare for the next pandemic,” Schiff tweeted.
After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, we looked at what went wrong to learn from our mistakes.
Once we've recovered, we need a nonpartisan commission to review our response and how we can better prepare for the next pandemic.
I’m working on a bill to do that.https://t.co/uqO3BwVldN [1]
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 1, 2020 [2]
The California lawmaker has introduced a bill to set up the commission, which he insists will be crucial to help the nation learn to better handle a similar crisis.
It’s unlikely to get much love from the Republican Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a well-earned reputation for refusing to even take up such Democratic-friendly measures
Such a bill is even less likely to win the support of Trump, especially since his nemesis Schiff is the one promoting it.
But even some Democrats in the House of Representatives might not like the optics of laying the groundwork for pointing fingers while the nation is still in the grips of the pandemic.
Schiff did not give specifics regarding when the legislation will be dropped but suggested it would be after Congress finishes the task at hand: mulling a series of stimulus packages aimed at alleviating the economic impact of the pandemic. Sources familiar with the legislation told NBC News [3] the legislation is “very preliminary.”
“We will need to delay the work of the commission until the crisis has abated to ensure that it does not interfere with the agencies that are leading the response,” Schiff told The Washington Post [4]. “But that should not prevent us from beginning to identify where we got it wrong and how we can be prepared for the next pandemic.”