A Republican lawmaker received an angry check Wednesday from a House Democrat who found himself forced to remind his fellow committee members they were not hunting communists amid a post-global war Red Scare.
Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) shouted down fellow Oversight Committee member Glen Clay Higgins (R-LA) for a line of questioning that Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael S. Regan likened to an assault.
"It's not the McCarthy era," roared Mfume. "It's not the McCarthy committee."
Tensions had mounted quickly after Higgins delivered a wrathful soliloquy against the EPA's efforts to curb CO2 emissions from aircraft engines.
"He's the one that's agenda-driven, not me," barked Higgins. "To have an agenda-driven green new deal, anti-American, anti-American energy, anti-American petrol-chemical agenda shoved down our throat by an administration that claims it's doing so on behalf of protecting the world's ecological stability...that is hypocrisy at its worst."
Higgins then demanded to know of Regan what his plans were in the future and shouted the administrator down when he replied, "My plans are personal."
EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s ‘secretary of retribution’ has a ‘target list’ of 350 people he wants arrested
Regan doubled down on his refusal.
"With you just assaulting me and saying I'm un-American?" Regan replied. "Now you want to know my plans—"
Higgins cut him off to declare, "We're definitely living in two different worlds."
"Oh yeah," Regan replied. "We are in two different worlds."
It was at this point a calm Mfume interjected to put his views on the record.
"We always ought to put a stop sign in front of ourselves when we start assailing by name the personal integrity of any witness," Mfume said. "It continues to happen. I want to make sure I'm on the record so that members on the committee on both sides of the aisle will at least respect the personal integrity of a witness before this committee."
Higgins did note take the criticism lightly, and declared it was his duty to question Regan vigorously because of the position of power he held.
"This is the Oversight committee," Higgins said. "This is where government is forced to sit in front of congress and be held accountable for their actions."
At this point, Mfume compared him to Sen. Joe McCarthy, the notorious Wisconsin Republican whose congressional fear-mongering ushered in the era of the blacklist and the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
The exchange shocked viewers on social media who applauded both Regan and Mfume for their responses to Higgins' questioning.
"Absolutely right this is not the McCarthy era," replied X user Kim Freestad. "But the Republicans sure seem to reveling in McCarthyism when questioning witnesses."
