Eating Their Own: Left Primaries Democrat Who Refuses to Request Trump’s Taxes

Alex Morse, 30, announced Monday plans to challenge the powerful House Ways & Means Chairman Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal in 2020.

Morse, the mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, is being encouraged to run by progressive Democrats who are frustrated by Neal’s delay in obtaining Trump’s state tax returns under the law passed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, NBC News reported.

“There’s an urgency to this moment in Massachusetts’ First District and our country, and that urgency is not matched by our current representative in Congress,” Morse said in a video to announce his challenge.

Democrats have been frustrated with Neal, 70, because he has not requested Trump‘s New York state tax returns despite the new law, saying that Neal’s committee “has shown none of the zeal for oversight exhibited by its counterparts.”

“We respect his focus on moving rapidly on health care, tax policy, and pensions but at the same time many of us have tried to express the sense of urgency which we and our constituents feel about enforcing the law and obtaining Trump’s tax returns,” an aide to a Democratic member of the Ways and Means told NBC.

Cuomo signed a bill into law July 8 giving access to Trump’s New York state tax returns to “congressional tax-related committees” if they can cite a “legitimate task” of Congress in seeking them, according to NBC.

Neal said that he did not request Trump’s state returns under the new law because he doesn’t want to hamper efforts to get Trump’s federal filings, which he is currently suing the Treasury and IRS to obtain, a process Neal didn’t begin for several months after the new congress was sworn in.

Neal, who has held office since 1988, has also said that requesting Trump’s state returns only served to legitimize complaints that Congress sought them for political purposes only, Neal told Bloomberg News.

Neal’s office did not immediately return requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.