The House Ethics Committee continues to move at a glacial pace in determining whether lawmakers have broken House rules, according to watchdog groups, despite the creation in 2008 of an ethics office designed to spur movement.
The Office of Congressional Ethics has forced the Ethics committee to at least scrutinize members’ behavior. But that doesn’t mean cases are being wrapped up.
The process is “not as expedient once cases get to the Ethics Committee” and “they are forced to look and take on the unpleasant task of judging their colleagues,” said Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert said.
The failure of the Ethics Committee to move with dispatch has created a problem now that President-elect Trump reportedly will tap Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington to be his interior secretary. McMorris Rodgers faces allegations that she mixed official, leadership, political action committee and campaign funds in violation of House rules.
The OCE referred the matter to the panel in late 2013. But except for one public announcement in March 2014 that the committee was extending its review, it has yet to make any determinations or take any action.
The slow pace in her case is “problematic,” said Gilbert, who directs the group’s Congress watch division.
McMorris Rodgers has denied the allegations through an attorney.
The bipartisan committee is also slowly examining the actions of another high-profile member, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., whose colleagues just elected chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.
On March 18, the OCE recommended that the committee investigate payments to his former chief of staff that continued months after he left Meadows’ office. On Aug. 17, the committee said it needed more time to determine if it should open an investigation. Meadows himself asked the committee to look into the matter in November 2015.
The OCE is an independent agency created in response to claims that Congress was not policing itself enough through the Ethics Committee. Numerous scandals, some of which ended in lawmakers and staffers going to jail, came to light between 2006-2008, but the Ethics Committee ignored the allegations.
The office has a professional staff that investigates allegations of wrongdoing and presents a case to an eight-member board, which then decides whether to refer the matter to the bipartisan Ethics Committee for adjudication.
“It’s a really important decision,” Gilbert said of the House’s 2008 decision to create the office. “It has to be rewritten into the rules every Congress. We are paying close attention to make sure that OCE stays in place. It’s just been a critical new link in making sure that members of Congress are ethical.”
Its staff does “a good job in a nonpartisan manner” of determining which allegations to send to the Ethics Committee for review, said the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust’s Matthew Whitaker.
Although watchdogs agree the OCE has forced the Ethics Committee to be more active — it was basically dormant between 2002 and 2008, before the OCE was created — they say the process could still be improved.
For example, neither the office nor the committee has subpoena power. The panel must note when it has received a referral, but it can repeatedly extend the review period, effectively shelving complaints.
In fact, that seems to be what the committee most often does, sometimes with the result that lawmakers leave Congress before any action is taken.
Former Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., resigned from Congress this summer before the panel’s investigative subcommittee completed its work. Fattah was convicted in June of racketeering, bribery and other crimes.
And so, as far as the Ethics Committee was concerned, case closed
Sometimes, lawmakers can’t clear their names before deciding to leave Congress.
On Oct. 17, the Ethics Committee extended its probe of Rep. Marlin Stutzman, whom the OCE in August alleged improperly used campaign funds to pay for a family vacation. The Indiana Republican served his last day in Congress on Friday, having lost his bid for the GOP nomination for Senate in the spring.
The OCE alleged that Rep. Tom Petri, R-Wis., improperly helped a company he owned. But the Ethics Committee concluded that Petri had repeatedly sought its guidance in the matter and that he faithfully followed the informal advice he received from committee staff.
“Therefore, it would be inequitable to subject his conduct to an additional review at this later date, and the committee will take no further action in this matter,” the panel wrote Dec. 11, 2014.
That likely was of little solace to the veteran lawmaker, who had already announced his retirement at the end of the 113th Congress, which adjourned just six days later.
“We don’t always think the pace is quick as it should be,” Gilbert said. But she noted that with the OCE referring matters, they have many more allegations to review, she acknowledged. It would be “fantastic to have hard timetables” built into the rules, she said.
Whitaker said the OCE office is unnecessary.
“You’ve added a whole other step in the process,” he said. “The OCE provides a valuable nonpartisan review of ethics complaints in the House, but I’m not convinced that that extra step is worth it at the end of the day,” he said, adding that committee staff could do what the OCE does.
Three other referrals have languished before the committee as long as the one regarding McMorris Rodgers.
The committee has extended its reviews of allegations lodged in 2014 against Reps. Luis Gutierrez and Bobby Rush, both Democrats from Illinois, and Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.
Some members, including Meadows and Stutzman, have claimed through their lawyers that the OCE staff is not impartial.
Meadows’ self-reporting was, “not surprisingly,” a fact “that the OCE ignores or disregards in its referral,” wrote Berke, who is also his lawyer.
OCE staff did not provide “exculpatory evidence” to the OCE board while it deliberated about referring the matter to the Ethics Committee, claimed Cleta Mitchell, Stutzman’s attorney. The staff was “predisposed” to finding Stutzman “guilty,” his response read.
Although watchdogs would like to see cases closed more quickly, they are fairly satisfied by the committee’s determinations once it makes them.
“I would never say that this system is geared toward punishment,” Gilbert said. “The mechanisms for calling out members of Congress are slim.” However, “embarrassment is something that members of Congress are very sensitive to, which is why for so long the committee didn’t do anything,” she said. Just acknowledging they were under investigation was considered horribly embarrassing and potentially career ending, she said.
To that end, the punishment the committee most often metes out — shaming — is fairly effective, Gilbert said.
The committee has usually voted to issue letters of “reproval” when it found the lawmaker at fault.
“In most instances, the real arbiter of these people’s behavior is the voters back home,” Whitaker said, adding he generally finds the committee’s conclusions and punishments sufficient.
