David Obey: “I honestly believe this is the worst day for this institution in this century, and history will see it as such. The tool…”

“I honestly believe this is the worst day for this institution in this century, and history will see it as such. The tool of impeachment was inserted in the Constitution to protect the country from irreparable harm, not to punish the President. Under our system, the proper institution to punish the President if he violated the law is the court system, a legal institution, not the Congress, a political institution. The House Republican leadership has said that this is a vote of conscience. It is denying the right to cast that vote of conscience to those of us who believe that the proper course is to censure, not impeach. That decision dooms this House to go down in history as tragically lacking in both perspective and fairness. To those who say censure has no bite, my response is this: I come from the State of Joe McCarthy. Tell him censure has no bite. It destroyed him. Whether the President has committed perjury or not is a legal, technical question that can be decided by a jury and a judge and our court system at the proper time. There is no question that the President has misled the country and the Congress. That is unacceptable. But, in my view, it does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, because the lies essentially grew out of sex, not public acts. If the House ignores that distinction, it fails in its obligation to put the President's acts in perspective.”