(Headline USA) Republican senators grilled the Biden administration this week over a controversial and highly secretive executive order aimed at “mobilizing” voters ahead of the 2024 election.
Critics have said the order likely violates the Hatch Act at best—and, at worst, is part of a cynical and deliberate scheme by the Biden administration to systematically weaponize the federal government as a partisan tool for Democrats’ political advantage.
In a letter to President Joe Biden, Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and 21 other Republicans accused the administration of deliberately preventing them from exercising congressional oversight over Executive Order 14019.
The group said they submitted questions to administration officials more than six months ago, but have been ignored repeatedly.
“This policy directive merits congressional oversight both as a general matter and under the Antideficiency Act,” the senators wrote, according to Fox News.
The executive order “outlines various activities in which agencies are to engage, including promoting mail-in voting and partnering with third-party organizations to register voters,” the senators noted.
However, “[f]ederal agencies should be focused on their defined missions in a nonpartisan manner, not using taxpayer funds for voter mobilization efforts with potentially partisan impacts,” they added.
It is “doubtful” that Congress approved the use of taxpayer funds that these agencies will inevitably use to advance “voter mobilization,” they added.
“It’s not the job of the federal government to drive voter turnout,” the senators said. “Reviewing these agency plans is crucial to determining whether this order has or may lead to the improper use of federal resources.”
House Republicans have also pushed back against the order. Last year, then-Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C. (now a U.S. senator) introduced a bill to prevent Biden from using executive authority to “fortify” the 2024 election on behalf of the Democratic Party.
“President Biden’s executive order empowering every federal agency to engage in electioneering on the taxpayers’ dime raises serious ethical and legal concerns,” Budd said in a statement at the time. “This sweeping directive is inherently partisan and directed primarily at groups expected to vote for one party over another.”
