Can Dems Whack Weiner?
Rep. Anthony Weiner has announced that he will be seeking "treatment" to become "a better husband and healthier person" and the Democratic leadership has also made it clear that they would like nothing better than to see him go. If Weiner decides to stick around, what other options are there for the Democrats to try and push him out the door?
For starters, they could vote to take away his committee seat (Weiner sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee.) There is precedent for this. Rep. William Jefferson had his committee seat removed from him when he was caught in a corruption investigation.
The other way that Democrats can put pressure on Weiner is by denying him campaign funds for reelection, something that presumably would be easy to do given that the heads of the DNC and DCCC have called on him to resign.
Remaining options include expulsion and censure. When Rep. Charlie Rangel was censured in 2010, he became the twenty-third congressman to receive that public humiliation.
As for expulsion, while Congress does have the power to expel one of their members, according to a Congressional Research Services document the House has only ever expelled five members from the body. Three of them were expelled during the Civil War for taking up arms against the Union. More recently, Rep. Michael J. Myers was expelled in 1980 due to bribery while Rep. James Traficant was expelled in 2002 on conspiracy to commit bribery.
Democratic leaders presumably don’t want to have to use these options.