This week the Republicans could not have shown America any better why the House of Representatives desperately needs to create an independent panel to assist with ethics enforcement.
First it was the 35 count indictment against Rick Renzi (R-AZ) earlier in the week.
Now, on Thursday, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on H. Res 895, which would enact the recommendations of the bipartisan Ethics Task Force to create an independent panel to investigate ethics complaints.
In response, senior House Republican aides are reportedly compiling a list of Democratic House members to target with ethics complaints if the House votes to create the independent commission. We need your help in demanding the entire Republican Leadership -- John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Adam Putnam and Thaddeus McCotter and any other Republican who believes in the rule of law -- immediately denounce these political assassins who have dared to draw up and publicize a list of Democratic lawmakers they intend to persecute if the House votes to establish an independent Office of Congressional Ethics. Call them today. The number for the Capitol Hill switchboard is (202) 224-3121. (If you do call, please tell us about it: www.commoncause.org/CleanUpCongress.
If Republicans lawmakers do not repudiate this behavior before the vote on Thursday, we have no choice but to conclude the Republican leadership condones what amounts to political extortion as a legitimate way of making laws in the House of Representatives and are not serious about enforcing ethical standards in Congress.
One wonders what they fear so much about an independent panel, chosen jointly by the Speaker and the Minority Leader, that would make them act like thugs.
The House is going to vote soon on the recommendations of the bispartisan Ethics Task Force appointed by Pelosi and Boehner. We have been advocating for an independent ethics office for years, so obviously we hope the Task Force's recommendation for independent oversight passes. For a timely reminder of why we need some independent oversight in Congress, here is
Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute on the recent Renzi scandal:
The far-reaching indictment of Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) was stunning. This was no penny-ante corruption charge, but a double-barreled set of accusations on a near-Duke Cunningham scale. When I write "far-reaching indictment," however, I mean a reach that goes beyond the serious charges against Renzi. This is an equaling compelling indictment against a Congressional ethics process that once again proves its utter impotence.
Far too often, in both the House and Senate, we have seen the same story: Issues about a lawmaker are raised in public, amplified by investigative reporting or other revelations, followed a considerable time later by indications that the Justice Department is investigating, followed often by an indictment. During all that time, there is zero indication of any activity on the part of the ethics committee.
Before there is a formal investigation, Congress tries to avoid a hint of looking into a potential ethics violation to avoid offending a colleague. When there is a formal indication of a criminal investigation, the ethics nabobs indicate that they do not want to interfere with it; if and when there is an indictment, there is pressure on the indictee to resign (which of course leaves him out of the reach of the ethics committee and the process).
The fact is that criminal investigations and criminal charges are neither the prerequisite for ethics actions nor should they be excuses to avoid ethics actions; what is unethical is not necessarily criminal, although what is criminal is almost certainly unethical. The Renzi case, the case involving Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) that preceded it and the many other cases in both chambers, including a number of current ones, simply show the inability of Congress to police itself -- and instead the relief at setting up an effective Catch-22 to provide an ongoing excuse to do not much of anything except when forced into it by public embarrassment.
When that happens, the result can be equally embarrassing. A good example was the farce surrounding Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), including the threat to use the ethics process as a weapon to force him to resign, not as an honest effort to create an appropriate punishment for an ethical violation, and not with any attempt to look at comparable cases of ethical violations by other Senators.
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