If you say you trust our government to do its job and our politicians to supervise themselves, you will be hard-pressed to find like-minded company. A 2014 survey from the Pew Research Center found just 24 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time.
Apparently many Republicans in the House of Representatives felt differently when they proposed a plan to give their internal House Committee on Ethics ultimate authority in ethics investigations. The plan was met with widespread and vehement disapproval.
Even President-elect Donald Trump remarked via Twitter, which he apparently still deems an appropriate primary source of communication, that Congress should instead focus on “tax reform, healthcare, and so many other things of far greater importance.”
This feels like something I shouldn’t have to say, but we are approaching an era in which many things we take for granted will likely have to be defended.
A system that suffers from occasional corruption is obviously better than a system so flawed that it essentially creates such corruption.
Not only was the plan to alter operations of the watchdog Office of Congressional Ethics correctly rejected, it should never have existed in the first place. Here’s why.
In its original form, the plan outlined in an amendment to H.Res.5 by Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-Virginia, was to make the independently operating Office of Congressional Ethics “subject to the authority and direction of the Committee on Ethics.”
That authority includes the ability for the internal House Committee on Ethics to command that the OCE “cease its review of any material and refer such matter to the Committee.”
Additionally, the OCE may not make any public statement or release material to the public or any external entity unless that information “has already been released by the Committee on Ethics or the release ... has been authorized by the Committee.”
If it had passed, the bill would have given members of a governing body the responsibility to police other members of that same body. Given the nature of politicians to rely on mutual cooperation or even protection in exchange for legislative support, this would have been dangerous.
It’s not hard to imagine that an internal investigative committee might be lenient in its examinations of the very people who constitute and work with that committee.
In fact this flawed and frankly immoral bill was proposed because some representatives felt the OCE investigations were too harsh and necessitated congresspersons under accusation mount costly defense campaigns to protect their reputations.
Goodlatte said in a statement from Jan. 2 that his amendment would improve “due process rights for individuals under investigation.” Perhaps the amendment’s measure to disallow anonymous complaints addresses this, but granting the House Committee more power does not.
Goodlatte and his supporters say they will continue to fight for reform in ethics investigations. Though I am sure that these investigations can benefit from improvement, the proposed changes would have been a step in the wrong direction.
