"I Don't Know If Most People Even Know What Party Is In The Senate Majority"

AOC explains the value of accountability, excoriates Senate Democratic leaders for shirking oversight obligations, and lays out a vision for a more fearless, effective party

If you’ve been following the news recently, you’ve probably gathered that the state of New York has fined Donald Trump almost half a billion dollars for engaging in serial financial fraud. But most of that coverage glosses over something well known only to political insiders: That Trump would most likely have gotten away with the fraud if it weren’t for congressional oversight.

After Democrats took control of the House in 2019, they held a single, high-profile hearing with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former bag man, who by then had turned on his boss and become a cooperating witness against him in multiple investigations. Under questioning from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Cohen drew a roadmap for any investigators seeking evidence of Trump’s financial crimes.

Given how fruitful this five-minute exchange proved to be, it’s striking and frustrating—and more than a little puzzling—that Democratic leaders didn’t prioritize more hearings just like it. AOC is frustrated, too. Democrats lost control of the House in 2022, but they still control the Senate, where the party’s appetite for oversight and accountability has only dwindled.

I spoke to AOC about this strange allergy to oversight, the roots of the party’s reluctance, what more its leaders could do, and what issues she would pursue if she wielded an oversight gavel. Our conversation ran 30 minutes, the transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.

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Brian Beutler: We're here to talk about the value of oversight and why Democrats shouldn't fear it, even if it entails some degree of conflict or partisanship. So first, I guess my threshold question is, why does the party need this kind of encouragement? What's the impediment that makes them reluctant to be more aggressive on that front in the first place?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): Well, I think there's a couple of things. I think some of it, a lot of it, is institutional. I think we can see a pretty stark contrast between how, for example, House Democrats pursue oversight strategies as opposed to how we've seen oversight pursued within the Senate. And so I think some of it is institutional, but that institutional reason I think is actually rooted in a difference of politics. I think the Senate sometimes, oftentimes, fears anything that could be seen as partisan.

It's very much rooted and slanted, particularly when Democrats are in the majority, towards kind of—an almost assumption of moral virtue of anything, so long as it has a bipartisan element to it. And I think that we really need to dispense ourselves of that notion when we are contending with the Republican Party that is actively anti-democratic and seeking to overturn elections and represent, frankly, a grave threat to the republic.

BB: So the problem in the Senate, and I do want to get to the Senate, but is like this kind of clubbiness, which I think is evident to most people who follow politics closely. But in the House, I mean, the current ranking member of the Oversight Committee is Jamie Raskin. And I know that when Democrats had the majority for the second half of Trump's first term, he wanted to go after the emoluments issue. And he thought it should be something Trump should maybe be impeached over.

And the leadership pushed him off that, and there are other examples, that's just one that comes to mind right now, and that’s the—I don't understand it and I think a lot of my readers don't, and maybe you can help clarify what what is it that makes the leadership think, “that's not a good idea.”

AOC: Well you know that's an excellent point. I think—you know, before getting to the analysis of it, like just recounting that time, I know that there was so much fear, because Donald Trump had not been defeated in his re-election. His strength over his base seemed so powerful and complete and total that it almost seemed as though the calculation was we can't go too far. Because being too aggressive would risk not just him reanimating his base, but also I don't think there was a certainty that, you know, so-called moderate voters would respond well to that.

And so I think the fear around that caused a little bit of that timidity. But my argument then was that that's wrong, and my argument now I think is that that's wrong with evidence—with like a lot more evidence—which is that when we are assertive when people see us scrapping and actually fighting in governance the way we promised we would in campaigns and in elections, that it actually strengthens our hand, it emboldens our hand, and we actually gain support. And the same things that Democrats feared about Trump and his demonstrations of strength, they’re also possible for Republicans to fear about Democrats and us demonstrating strength.

And a lot of times I think people see it as a spending of political capital, but it's actually an accumulation of it.

BB: The way I interpret what you're saying is that the inclination maybe in leadership ranks is if we do this, we're gonna galvanize Trump supporters and we have frontline members and we don't want his base to be riled up by this or swing voters to be turned off by the fact that we're doing oversight instead of whatever else. And your counterpoint is that the oversight works politically on two levels: one is that if you uncover bad deeds it reflects poorly on the president, and the other is that your own base gets mobilized, gets excited, when Democrats take his threat to democracy seriously, his corruption seriously, and push back—it gets them riled up too.

AOC: Yeah and also this is our job you know especially as it pertains to the Oversight Committee. Our core function, while yes, increasingly in these times, it can be partisan, but it doesn't have to be. There are issues where people question what government is for, who it serves, and how it's functioning, and if it's functioning in our best interest. The powers that we have within the Oversight Committee allow us to do that, but again, not just on a partisan basis. We've gone after big Pharma CEOs that resulted in certain medications being brought generic over a year early because we weren't afraid to be bulldogs about that.

There are results that we can get that can completely bypass the legislative gridlock and constraints that we have solely through the power of oversight and hearings. We have taken on defense contractors that have refunded millions of dollars in wasteful spending. We've taken on Pharma. We've taken on fossil fuel CEOs. We've taken on lobbyists. And it has actual results, either folks making major changes due to the political pressure that results from a hearing like that, or in the information that emerges in a high-stakes hearing, you can then have major changes years on.

And this is what we're contending with right now as a result of the Michael Cohen hearing. It is now fundamentally transforming the presidential election on a very structural level and a very profound financial level because Democrats were willing to fight several years ago. And so this is all about creating conditions that shape both the short, middle, and long-term realities that we live in.

BB: When you got those answers out of Michael Cohen, did you think from there that—what happened after that? Did it go the way you wanted? Or did it or did it feel like it just got shunted off to the prosecutors and the New York Attorney General's Office and that Congress didn't pull the thread harder, and try to discover more, based on the information you uncovered?

AOC: To me, especially at the time, the fact that it had a next step that was serious and consequential is what is most important. I am less interested in the turf war over like where it goes, but I'm very interested in the fact that it must be consequential. And in many ways, it ended up exactly where it was supposed to end up, which was the Southern District of New York.

BB: You mentioned sometimes substantively insulin prices go down, not just because there's a law, but because public pressure makes private insurance companies reduce the price of insulin. That's purely just like the information environment having an effect on policy. And then you look at the lowbrow opposite of that is like Hillary Clinton's emails or the Hunter Biden laptop. But you still see Republicans generating political power out of fake issues.

So given that there's this whole spectrum between policy-oriented oversight and like political-corruption oversight that can be rooted in almost nothing. Do you think Democrats have gotten the balance right now? Especially given that right now there's this question kind of lingering over the Hunter Biden investigation about what Republicans knew and when they knew it about the fact that the evidence and witnesses that they were relying on were sort of tools of foreign-intelligence services.

AOC: So you're asking, do we have the balance right on the policy piece and the more technical oversight piece and the narrative piece?

BB: I guess what I'm saying is it sounds like Democrats have like a much less apprehension about doing oversight rooted in things like prescription-drug prices or corporate consolidation, sort of kitchen table issues writ large. And they're more hesitant to do sort of partisan, anti-political corruption oversight.

And I realize that House Democrats are in the minority now, so they're sort of limited in what they can compel. But to the extent that you guys still share the dais with Republicans, is there enough interest in the caucus, do you think, in the question of like, what did the Republicans know about this specific problem with their own investigation? Were they in on it?

AOC: Yeah, I mean, I do think that there is absolutely that appetite, particularly within the Oversight Committee. One of the interesting dynamics, I think, that has emerged is that there has been a shift of, I think, putting a certain kind of Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. And I do think that there's a desire to go on offense.

We are limited by where we're at in the minority, but I also think that we have a very special window right now where we can and should really, really reframe and educate people on what this means. And I think that's the part that's very important for all of us to lean in on. That this is not just an event of the day, or the latest development in this dramatic and chaotic dysfunctional saga. We now have a Republican party and an entire impeachment inquiry that was opened based on a source compromised with Russian intelligence.

This is a completely new story and it should be treated as such. It should be seen as the scandal that it is. I think we also need, in addition to that message, we also need the institutional support when we are in the minority examining what are the other tools at our disposal. Who else is on this team, right? What is the correct tool that we can use to pursue this in addition to the bully pulpit?

House Republicans just passed the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas not too long ago. And if this was completely baseless, and they don't have evidence for the other, then we really need to be asking the question, in a very serious way, Who are these folks working for if they are presenting cases without evidence? What is their motivation, genuinely?

And getting people to ask that question in and of itself, I think is a really major victory for us. It is ground that we can win on.

BB: Would it help if the Senate was maybe asking some of those questions?

AOC: I would love if the Senate gavels were put to use, and all of them need to be put to use. I don't know if most people in the country even know what party is in the Senate majority at times.

And while the limitations of the filibuster are seen and heard, and we need to be doing something about that, we still run every committee in the United States Senate. And you would not know that. We do not see it.

Frankly, with the exception of Senator Sanders and how he has wielded the HELP Committee, you would not know that we have this power in the Senate. Everyday people certainly don't know. And we can we can use these Senate gavels to remind people and show people what Democrats do when we have power, because it is a very dangerous message to send that we don't do enough or we do very little and that we don't use every tool at our disposal.

We should not say, “Oh, this is happening because of the filibuster.” It's actually not happening because of the filibuster. This has nothing to do with the filibuster. This is an entire battleground that we are ceding and there's no excuse for it.

BB: So let's imagine for a second that the House Democrats had a majority or that you were over in the Senate where they do have a majority. You had one of these gavels.

What are like the top three or the top few issues you'd like to see investigated aggressively? In the spirit of your question to Michael Cohen, who would you want to question, and what would you want to ask them?

AOC: We need to go after the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court. And through the Supreme Court, we explore the entire network of issues that are most important to everyday Americans: The influence of dark money in creating a government that works against the American people, the majority of the American people. The erosion of abortion rights and reproductive freedom in the United States. The actual institution of the Supreme Court itself, and the complete lack of ethical or legal standards that they are subject to, and shedding light on it.

I think it's one of the most important things that we can do and it's one of the biggest missed opportunities that we've had, but it's not too late. I think that that, in and of itself, even if you just did one, that could fundamentally transform the landscape. The Supreme Court is a political institution and Chief Justice Roberts may not like to hear that, but he works with them and he knows.

It's a political institution that responds to pressure. And absent pressure, they are going to do more of what we saw this week, which is enabling and risking our entire democracy at the behest of Donald Trump and Leonard Leo and the entire network that installed them there. And we have to fight back. We need to show people what they vote for. And we need to conduct this oversight, not in a year, not in five years. We need to start right now.

BB: Do you think Democrats in general, and particularly I'm thinking like senior gavel-wielding Democrats, see the connection between slow walking an investigation of Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito and the people who've sort of paid them under the table, and the [party’s] unwillingness to work the Supreme Court refs by talking about how there's question marks over their decisions—a connection between that and, as you alluded to just a second ago, this week, the Supreme Court says, “you know what, Donald Trump? You get another couple months at least before your January 6 trial process even resumes, you're probably just gonna get away without a trial before the election.”

Do you think that Democrats at the top echelon see that those two things are connected?

AOC: Certainly doesn't seem like they do. And if they do, what does it matter if you don't do anything about it? There's no difference between not understanding the stakes and understanding the stakes and doing nothing materially, and so we if we do understand the stakes then we have a moral responsibility to do everything we can to prevent that outcome. I mean, it's profoundly important. It's profoundly important.

And voters are tired of hearing Democrats abdicate all responsibility to them. We can't run away from these questions. What does a person say if a voter says, “Why isn't the Senate investigating this?” What does a Democrat say to that? Truly! I'm not gonna make excuses for the United States Senate. It was the last institution I would make excuses for!

I just think it is so important that I think our party understands that we gain momentum and we gain support when people either see us winning or catch us trying. And if we're not winning, we need to be caught trying.

BB: My sense is that the halting oversight in the Senate in particular has helped to squander the advantage that Joe Biden rightly has over Donald Trump on the question of who's the more ethical candidate, right? I don't think it's like 50-50 in the country, but it's much closer than it should be.

Is it too late to flip that back to how it should be? Like at what point are you and I having a conversation about something that should have happened a year ago, but now it's kind of water under the bridge and it's over?

AOC: I don't think it's too late. It's February, soon March. It's still early in the year and a subpoena can be signed at any time. A letter, an invitation to testify before the Senate can be sent out even faster. And again, we need to be caught trying.

I think there's oftentimes this obsession of only doing things that have guaranteed success. It sets us up for failure every single time.

There are moments where you only want to bring a bill to the floor if it has the votes. We can see the dysfunction of the House Republican Caucus to know that there's a time and place for that.

But we can't just tell people why it’s important for us to have majorities. We have to show them why. And I think particularly when we have a majority in any institution, whether it's the House or the Senate, we have to be as aggressive as possible because we are now at a stage of political polarization where your swing Republican to Democrat voter—they exist, they're important—but we're increasingly relying on base races. And the more disaffected your base, the more political risk you incur. In addition to the persuadable voters to go from Republican to Democrat, it's to go from couch to voting booth. And if they don't see us trying, why should they try for us?

People don't wanna feel like they're putting in more effort than their member of Congress. You know, you're asking people oftentimes to wait 12 hours in the blistering sun in a county that is trying to disenfranchise them and throw them off a ballot. And for all of this work, the least we can do is pick up that gavel and send an invitation to people and hold them accountable for the disruption to our democracy.

BB: Okay, so there are minimal Trump accountability investigations happening in the Senate, but you said like with the exception of Senator Sanders, there's kind of no public oversight at all. And there's obviously realms where Democrats could do oversight that is about substantive policy, right? Donald Trump is gonna come into office and the Heritage Foundation is going to give him a game plan for gutting the federal government and restricting reproductive rights even further and so on. And that's something that is ripe for oversight in my mind.

I don't see a lot of that happening either. And so the question is, with that wind up: Is it the clubby culture that we talked about at the top, or is it a leadership issue? And with better leadership would the same members of the Senate be a more productive oversight body?

AOC: I'm not sure if those two factors can really be disaggregated. The Senate has the culture that it does because of the people that inhabit it. And not just because the people who inhabit it now, but because the folks who participate in that culture have been participating in it for decades. And so something's got to give here.

We either need to realize that this is an institution that has profound influence in the here and now, in the real world, or we're going to continue floating like a cloud. But esteem is not what this is about and it should not be what is prioritized. Bipartisanship is only as valuable as what it accomplishes. And if bipartisanship is primarily, in the Senate, accomplishing the destruction of progress for everyday people, then it's not useful.

You have to see what the ends are. And I don't think we should be afraid to be Democrats. I don't think we should be afraid to say, “we're right about this,” in moments where we're clearly right. And I do worry that there is an acclimation—this idea that we're still in, I don't know, the 90s, the 80s, that we're not in the political time that we're in.

And a lot of times I think there is a generational issue of governing in a time you wish you were in, as opposed to governing in the time that we are actually in. And we cannot, in good faith, go to the American people and talk rightfully about the dire stakes of this moment and then mosey on back and say, oh, well, you know, we're not being more aggressive because that's just not how we do things around here.

Like, come on, are the gloves off or not? And if they're off, they need to be off for everybody. If they're on, then stop texting people that you need them to give $5 or the world’s burning down.

BB: Right! Do you really mean it when you go out and say that democracy hangs in the balance if you're not acting like it?

AOC: Mmhmm.