Articles
Washington Post: Policing Congress; A new office will toughen House ethics enforcement, finally
03/29/2008
THE STRONGEST ethics rules in the world don't mean much
without an effective way to enforce them. That's especially clear when it comes
to Congress, whose enforcement process is designed to create gridlock and has
too often performed accordingly. This month the House adopted an important
change that holds the promise of ending this bipartisan lassitude. Pressed by
the Democratic leadership under Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a
not-entirely-enthusiastic majority voted narrowly to create an independent
Office of Congressional Ethics.
This office will have a board of six members, to be named
jointly by the speaker and the minority leader; these are to be
"individuals of exceptional public standing who are specifically qualified
to serve on the board by virtue of their education, training, or experience in
one or more of the following fields: legislative, judicial, regulatory,
professional ethics, business, legal, and academic."
The office will have the power to accept ethics complaints
and, at the behest of at least one appointee of each party, launch
investigations of potential ethical missteps by lawmakers and staff. If it
finds reason to proceed, it will refer the matter to the existing House ethics
committee, along with its factual findings and recommendations for subpoenas,
if needed. The final disposition -- and any recommendations for punishment --
would be left to the ethics panel.
This is not a perfect system by any means. We would have
preferred to have the board itself empowered to subpoena evidence. But this
change reflects a vast, and overdue, improvement over the current process. The
alternative that Republicans offered was a joke. They proposed to expand the existing
ethics committee (from 10 to 14 members) and to require it to complete
investigations within 90 days or refer the matter to the Justice Department.
This proposal misconstrued the fundamental job of the committee, which is to
deal with ethical issues that often do not rise to the level of criminal
violations. It also misunderstands the essential nature of the problem, which
is that, whatever its size, the committee is programmed for inaction.
"We don't need a new layer of bureaucracy to stand between those who break the rules and those who must enforce them," Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in arguing against the new board. Actually, a new layer with the capacity to spur the ethics committee into action is precisely what's needed. And what's needed now is for Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Boehner to turn their attention to finding the kind of "individuals of exceptional public standing" who are needed to help Congress gets its ethical house in order.