Last month, the House was quick to claim victory on a package of ethics reforms it adopted as part of their much-ballyhooed "First 100 Hours." But as Congress began significant debate on Iraq and 2007 and 2008 appropriations, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) dealt a tough blow to further ethics reforms.
They did so by naming an ethics task force that is to recommend, by May 1, whether the House can enforce its own ethics rules. The alternative would be to create some outside office to carry out ethics enforcement and investigations.
Independent enforcement is a no-brainer. In two words: Mark Foley.
He gets super-super buddy-buddy with House pages not even half his age, members know what he's doing and ignore it FOR YEARS, and when the scandal erupts, the Ethics Committee can't find ANYONE to punish?
It also didn't seem to matter that the House Ethics Committee sat by and did little or nothing during a relentless parade of ethics issues and scandals on both sides of the aisle in the past few years. Where are the committee's investigations of William Jefferson and Alan Mollohan? And when the committee had the temerity to embarrass Tom DeLay a couple of years ago, former Speaker Dennis Hastert eviscerated it and stacked it with DeLay allies.
Hm. They must be looking for concrete evidence, I guess.
And then there's the problem of the eight members Pelosi and Boehner named to the task force -- not quite a star-studded lineup when it comes to ethics reform.
We have Rep. Mike Capuano, D-MA, chairing the task force, along with fellow Reps. Marty Meehan, D-MA, Bobby Scott, D-VA and Betty McCollum, D-MN. The panel is rounded out with Reps. Lamar Smith, R-TX, David Hobson, R-OH, Todd Tiahrt, R-KS, and Dave Camp, R-MI. Smith and Hobson have sat on the ethics committee, and Capuano has carried the Dems' water on changing House rules and internal guidelines for the Democratic caucus.
Just in case this task force needs a jump-start: When you look at independent ethics enforcement, the states have it all over Congress. There are 23 states that have some form of it. In the past two years, several states, including Connecticut and North Carolina, have created new, independent ethics commissions. And other states, like Wisconsin, Oregon, Michigan and Illinois, may follow suit.
In fact, David Freel of the Ohio Ethics Commission says that more states are working to enhance ethics oversight, and independent ethics bodies are one of those areas.
Congress' lousy record on ethics enforcement and its lagging nearly half the states in this area makes Boehner's muttering to Roll Call this week all the more incredulous. He told the newspaper he had "grave concerns about us abdicating our responsibility" for ethics enforcement outlined in the Constitution.
Hey, man, wake up and check out the evidence around you.
Congress abdicated its responsibility in this area a long time ago. Now you, the Speaker, and this task force must give us independent ethics enforcement -- or risk facing our wrath at the ballot box next year.
