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Apr 19, 2006 -- Ethics Coalition Sends Letter to House Urging Members to Support an Office of Public Integrity April 19, 2006
Dear Representative,
The unprecedented failure of the House to have a functioning, operational Ethics Committee for most of this Congress is a national disgrace.
The failure of the House, and its Ethics Committee, to conduct any investigation into the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandals also is a national disgrace. This is potentially the biggest congressional corruption scandal in decades.
The continuing absence of any willingness and publicly credible means to enforce the House ethics rules is a national scandal.
This cannot be allowed to continue.
Yet, the lobbying and ethics legislation proposed by the House Republican leadership, H.R. 4975, does absolutely nothing to reform the process for enforcing the House ethics rules. And a spokesperson for House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has stated that House Democrats generally don't support basic reform of the ethics process, believing the House ethics committee should be able to investigate complaints on its own, according to The Hill (April 12, 2006).
This is unacceptable.
As The New York Times stated in a recent editorial (April 12, 2006), "Inert and feckless, the House ethics committee stands as a laughable oxymoron. It is a still life in partisan gridlock even as the issue of Congressional corruption captures voters' attention."
The editorial further stated that, "both parties have little time left to show some spine and approve a vital proposal, now bottled up, to create an independent integrity office. It would have the power to investigate dicey legislative dealings and enforce standards for a Congress now in ethics denial."
Similarly, The Washington Post said in a recent editorial (April 1, 2006) " the panel's inactivity in the face of scandal is itself scandalous."
In an earlier editorial (February 25, 2006), The Washington Post stated that, "Tightening lobbying rules without doing something to improve enforcement would be like overhauling the tax code while abolishing the Internal Revenue Service."
The absence of effective ethics enforcement in the House is not a new problem. The process has always been marked by a reluctance to consider and act on serious ethics matters. Beginning in 1997, the so-called "ethics truce" essentially shut down ethics enforcement in the House. After a brief respite in 2004, in which some actions were taken, the Ethics Committee did not even function in 2005, and continues to be paralyzed today, according to recent public reports.
A failure by the House to reform its ethics enforcement process at this time would make a mockery of both the existing ethics rules and the efforts being considered to strengthen these rules.
In order to address this core ethics problem, our organizations strongly urge you to support H.R. 4799, the bipartisan proposal to establish an Office of Public Integrity (OPI) for Congress, sponsored by Representatives Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA), when the lobbying and ethics legislation reaches the House floor.
The organizations include the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG.
We also strongly urge you to vote against any rule or other procedure which seeks to bring lobbying and ethics legislation to the floor, without allowing Members to vote on strengthening amendments to the legislation, including the proposed OPI. The House should not use an undemocratic process to consider legislation to enhance our democracy.
Under the Shays-Meehan proposal, the OPI would be an independent, nonpartisan and professional office established in Congress to work with the House Ethics Committee to enforce the House ethics rules.
The OPI would be responsible for filtering out frivolous claims of ethics violations by Members, for investigating non-frivolous allegations and for presenting cases of probable ethics violations to the House Ethics Committee.
The Ethics Committee would continue to make the decisions about whether any violations of the ethics rules had occurred and would also have the ability to check actions of the OPI at earlier stages in the process.
In essence, the House Ethics Committee would no longer serve as the investigator, prosecutor and judge of potential ethics violations, a process of inherently conflicting responsibilities that has resulted in a paralyzed, non-credible ethics enforcement system.
Misleading claims have been made about the OPI by opponents who want to preserve the discredited status quo. Contrary to these claims, with an OPI, House Members would still have control over interpreting the House rules, determining whether ethics rules had been violated and deciding what sanctions should be applied in the case of violations.
Similarly, the OPI would not be operating completely on its own, but would be subject to checks by the Ethics Committee at each stage of the enforcement process.
At the same time, the OPI would ensure that serious allegations were reviewed and, where appropriate, presented to the Ethics Committee for consideration and action, without being bottled up and buried in the Ethics Committee from the outset, as is being done today.
Our organizations strongly urge you to vote for the Shays-Meehan proposal to establish an Office of Public Integrity in Congress. We also strongly urge you to vote against any rule or other procedure that denies Members the opportunity to vote on the OPI proposal and other important strengthening amendments to H.R.4975.
Campaign Legal Center
Common Cause
Democracy 21
League of Women Voters
Public Citizen
U.S. PIRG |
