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House ethics enforcers leave Congress mired in the muck
 Committee members find ways to excuse colleagues' bad behavior.
What does it take for a member of Congress to get in real trouble with the House ethics committee?
Quite a lot.
In fact, only one lawmaker -- Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. -- has merited even a wrist slap since Democrats were swept into the majority in 2007 on a wave of voter revulsion to scandals engulfing Republicans in Congress. Back then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through more stringent rules, vowed stricter enforcement and famously promised to "drain the swamp."
Well, she's going to need a bigger pump.
So far, the supposedly invigorated bipartisan House ethics committee has:
- Handed down its limpest discipline, an "admonishment," after finding that Rangel had taken two free trips to Caribbean conferences even though he should have known that big corporations indirectly financed them in violation of House rules.
The committee has yet to finish reviewing Rangel's more serious ethical problems, such as glaring omissions on his congressional financial disclosure statements. (Pending the outcome, Rangel has taken a "leave of absence" from his powerful post as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.)
- Exonerated five others who took the same trips as Rangel. The committee bought their stories that they didn't know about corporate sponsorship. Funny, conference photos show lawmakers standing in front of a bunch of corporate logos. Maybe they were blinded by the Caribbean sun.
- Essentially gave lawmakers a go-ahead to solicit campaign donations from business executives and lobbyists who apparently believe they're paying for federal contracts. Last month, the committee cleared seven members despite the findings by an independent investigative panel that two of them -- Reps. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan. -- might have tacitly tied requests for campaign donations to legislative earmarks profiting specific companies.
Visclosky, according to the panel's report, solicited contributions from a lobbying firm and its clients and gave the companies special access to himself and his staff one week before an earmarking session. Even though the committee found nothing wrong, federal prosecutors are investigating.
- Issued guidance telling lawmakers how to get around one of the more hated of the new ethics rules, which was supposed to end the practice of lobbyists throwing lavish parties to fete members. In 2008, the 10-member ethics panel said such parties are OK if they honor multiple members.
All of this is a far cry from the Democrats' vows to improve the Republicans' old see-no-evil ethics apparatus. The Democrats like to point out that they created an independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to investigate allegations, recommend action to the ethics committee and issue public reports. But they promptly emasculated their new creation by failing to give it subpoena power and ignoring its findings in several cases, despite evidence that members violated House rules.
Sadly, there is nothing new about ethically challenged lawmakers or ethics committees that act more as enablers than policemen. The solutions, too, have been obvious for a long time. The House needs an OCE with real investigative powers, an ethics committee that actually cares about ethics, and a speaker willing to stand up for strict rules when powerful members get caught breaking them.
Until honest, ethical members take a stand, the sleazy behavior so accepted on Capitol Hill will continue to tar them all.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2010-03-10 |
