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The House will vote Thursday on holding White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress.
The House Judiciary Committee approved contempt citations against Bolten and Miers by party-line vote in July.
Democratic leaders’ decision to hold a vote follows repeated efforts by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to obtain information related to the firing of several United States attorneys. White House officials have refused to allow Bolten and Miers to testify before his committee.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the vote would be about “whether or not the Congress of the United States acting pursuant to its Article I authority has the ability to get information it needs from the executive to legislate properly.”
Hoyer said Conyers had made “nine to 12 different efforts to get some cooperation from the White House.”
Republicans excoriated the decision to have an acrimonious debate only a day after Republican and Democratic leaders appeared together Wednesday at the White House to celebrate the signing of a bipartisan economic stimulus package.
“This is a sad attempt to distract from the thinness of the Democratic agenda this year,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). “The American people sent us here to get things done for them and to fix a broken Washington. This sort of partisan stunt is the opposite of what we need to be doing.”
House leaders have pushed off a vote on energy legislation until after the Presidents Day recess.
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