Vice President Biden said Tuesday that Republicans did the right thing by removing a provision from proposed House Rules that would have gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics and placed it under the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee.
“Wise judgment voting against doing that,” Biden said after swearing in senators on the first day of Congress’s return. “It would be a very, very bad thing to do. A very bad thing to do. The one thing people want is from all of us … is transparency.”
Biden, who served in Delaware’s upper chamber for nearly 40 years, pointed to his 1984 re-election campaign where he had to defend missing 18 percent of votes, noting that he only missed procedural votes and votes where the outcome was already set in stone. He ended up defeating Republican John Burris by 20 points.
“It matters,” Biden said. “People want to know ‘are you authentic? Is this what you really mean?'”
“Think how horrible it would be to have a job where you got up every morning and knew that in order to keep it you have to vote a way you didn’t believe,” Biden said. “That’s a job not worth having, man.”
Biden’s remarks echoed those from the White House earlier in the day. Prior to the removal of the provision, press secretary Josh Earnest declared that House Republicans were trying to “escape accountability” with the move, which was stripped from the House rules package only minutes before voting to re-elect Speaker Paul Ryan.
