House ethics: You snooze, you lose
By Kirstin Ellison
Posted on Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 11:13:28 AM EST
House Democrats want to be seen as the standard-bearers of ethics reform in government - but their efforts seemed to have stalled somewhere after the "100 hours" ended.
From today's Post:
The promise to end the "culture of corruption" they said developed in Washington under Republican rule helped propel Democrats into the majority in November elections. But after a promising start, lawmakers appear to be backing off a proposal for an independent entity to investigate ethics charges...after weeks of meetings, a House task force studying the issue says the group has not begun discussing a plan and will probably miss its May 1 reporting deadline.
Let the excuses begin! There's something called an "options menu" out there...and this gem from task force Chairman Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA):
"We were asked to consider whether there is a need for, a desire for this," Capuano said. "The answer we might come up with is, 'No, we don't need one.'"
Pardon me? Did I misread that? After DeLay, Ney, Cunningham, Jefferson, and Foley, they can't possibly delude themselves that the current ethics process works and doesn't need outside enforcement.
Or can they?
"We've got to do something or be wildly ridiculed," said a staffer working on the issue. "But members are always going to be worried about giving up some of their power."
Follow me inside to read what the watchdogs are saying, including a quote from our own Sarah Dufendach.
"Members don't see that inherent conflict of interest," said Sarah Dufendach of Common Cause, who has met with the House task force twice. In one meeting, she cited Foley as an example of problems with the current system. "They said, 'But he didn't break any House rules.' I wanted to say, 'Do you really think he didn't [discredit] the House?'"
That sentiment is echoed in the responses from other reformers:
"I told them they better not take a large amount of time, for their own protection," said Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has appeared before the ethics task force. If there were "an explosion of indictments...then it looks like you're responding defensively."
...But the true acid test, watchdogs say, is whether the House is willing to make substantial changes to the way it polices ethics.
"If this failed ethics enforcement process is left in place, we are bound to see problems arising in the future," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, one of a dozen government-oversight groups that have appeared before the House task force. "What we've seen so far raises very serious questions as to whether this task force is prepared to come up with real, basic change."
There's a window of opportunity here, ladies and gentlemen on the Hill, and if you snooze, you can bet you're going to lose.
Tags: ethics in government, ethics task force, House Ethics Committee, Michael Capuano, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, William Jefferson, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley (all tags)
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