involving former vice president joseph r., jr. and if that wasn t damning enough rudy giuliani went on fox news last night and said this. i didn t need her out of the way. i forced her out because she s corrupt. there s no question that she was acting corruptly in that position and had to be removed. there is no question that rudy giuliani is lying about that from start to finish. he has absolutely no negative evidence about ambassador yovanovitch at all. leading off our discussion tonight is democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut. he s a member of the foreign relations committee and appropriations committee. senator murphy, i want to begin with president trump s letter tonight in which he quotes ron johnson who you accompanied to ukraine. i just wants to read you that part of the trump letter. it says senator ron johnson a support of ukraine who met
congress. tonight the rules committee in a party line vote sent the articles of impeachment to the house floor tomorrow for a vote of the full house. in a letter to the democratic members of the house tonight, house speaker nancy pelosi wrote, when the house convenes to take the impeachment vote tomorrow morning i urge each of you to join me on the floor. our constituents look to us to be respectful of the constitution and defenders of our democracy and to proceed in a manner worthy of our oath of office to support and defend the constitution of the united states. during this very prayerful moment in our nation s history we must honor our oath to support and defend our constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. the white house released a letter to nancy pelosi tonight that is signed by the president, and some of the sentences in the letter indicates that they might actually read as if the president had a hand in writing
the house rules committee spent the day debating the articles of impeachment passed by the house judiciary committee. it was the kind of house committee hearing we have not seen in what feels like a very long time. there was no yelling. there were no attacks on members of the committee by other members of the committee in the opposite party, and that is thanks entirely to the good old-fashioned fully respectful working relationship of chairman jim mcgovern of massachusetts and the ranking republican member tom cole of oklahoma. sometimes old-fashioned is good, and today it was very good to see tom cole leading the republican side of the committee with flawless politeness and civility while completely disagreeing with jim mcgovern and the democrats. jim mcgovern and tom cole gave a master class today in what civility and respectful disagreement should look like in
bipartisan concern. several months ago when members of the foreign relations committee and appropriations committee learned this vitally needed assistance to ukraine was being held up for a number of undetermined reasons, there were a number of senators who pressed for answers, insight. and 1 of the striking things is senator durbin of illinois offered an amendment to the appropriations markup on september 12th that would put essentially would set aside some of the department of defense funding if this money to ukraine wasn t released. the money to ukraine was only released the night before that vote. and during that markup a number of senators, republicans and democrats said supporting ukraine in the face of russian aggression is an important national security goal. it enjoys wide bipartisan support, and there was a lot of expressions of concern by republicans and democrats at that early september markup about why the president was holding up this aid.
veterans who bear the scars and sacrifices of battle and with no thought of putting the cost of those two wars on american credit card and burdening children and grandchildren of the cost. as a member of the foreign relations committee and appropriations committee i m trying to raise my hand and saying we re not doing our job in congress. president obama sent us an aumf, washington speak for a request for a declaration of war against isis all the way back in february. and we have not taken it up, debated it and passed it. we owe that to our veterans and to those serving in the conflict against isis but we also need to stand up and say how are we going to pay for it. all the previous wars as you referenced before iraq and afghanistan had a dedicated war surtax. that s one way we could fairly pay for it with a small surtax that exempted active duty military families and veterans. but there s other ways we could pay for it. we just can t keep going without even discussing it.