The Office of Congressional Ethics begins the 115th Congress an independent entity, but government watchdog groups worry that House Republicans merely gave its autonomy a stay rather than a reprieve.
“I’m sure there will be bipartisan support for weakening it” later, the Project on Government Oversight’s Danielle Brian said about House Republicans’ last-minute decision to drop a plan to place the office under the House Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction.
“There are unethical members on both sides of the aisle,” Brian said.
“We need to maintain vigilance in protecting Congress’s independent watchdog,” said the Center for American Progress’s Liz Kennedy.
House Republicans voted in a private meeting Monday night to change the set-up of the office, which was established in 2008 in response to myriad ethical scandals and corruption cases emanating from Capitol Hill. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., a former interim House Ethics Committee chairman, drafted the proposal that would also have scaled back disclosure of the OCE’s work, and Republicans voted to include it in the rules package governing House operations for the next two years.
But amid backlash from watchdogs, constituents, Democrats and President-elect Trump, Republicans dropped the amendment from the package minutes before the new Congress was sworn in.
Kennedy said voters and good-government groups have to keep up pressure on lawmakers, pointing out that Republican leaders assured backers of Goodlatte’s amendment that they would craft a proposal to overhaul the OCE by summer’s end.
“There was a statement that suggested that this was just a matter of timing” and there “might be another attack later in this year,” she said.
Just before the holidays, watchdog groups wrote House leaders urging them to maintain the OCE in its current form and felt assured the rules package would include a provision guaranteeing status quo for the OCE.
Supporters say they didn’t know anything was afoot but that they are always leery this time of year and proposals such as Goodlatte’s are why they want the office made permanent.
“It sure was a drive by,” said Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton.
“This latest effort by House members to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics was not the first and it certainly won’t be the last,” Common Cause warned Tuesday. “Since its creation, members have regularly tried to gut the office through a variety of means. It is long past time for Congress to make the Office of Congressional Ethics permanent by codifying it into law — instead of through House rules alone — so we don’t face continual efforts to defund, defang or do away with OCE every two years.”
Although Democrats reveled in Republicans’ political miscalculation, many support curbing the OCE’s powers.
Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., who was once investigated by the OCE, proposed slashing the office’s budget in 2011, for instance.
In chastising his GOP colleagues, House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Democrats could be open to improving the way the OCE operates and refers matters to the House Ethics Committee.
The OCE cannot punish members. It can only refer complaints to the bipartisan ethics panel, which metes out any penalties.
“House Republicans could have found willing partners among Democrats to increase transparency and renew faith in government through bipartisan action, including making possible improvements to the Office of Congressional Ethics and the way Congress polices itself and maintains the highest standards of integrity among its members,” Hoyer said in a statement issued Monday night.
Lawmakers who have come under the OCE’s microscope complain about investigations stemming from anonymous tips, biased staffers and leaks.
“During the committee’s investigation, materials transmitted by OCE to the committee were disclosed to a newspaper,” the Ethics Committee scolded the OCE during a 2015 investigation into a 2013 congressional delegation to Azerbaijan and Turkey undertaken by nine members.
“This unauthorized public disclosure impeded the committee’s ongoing investigation, and prevented it from gathering information critical to its investigation,” the committee’s then-chairman and ranking Democrat wrote in a July 2015 statement.
The Azerbaijan matter was one of the rare instances where the friction between the OCE and the Ethics Committee — and by extension lawmakers — became public. The Ethics panel tried to stymy the OCE investigation, insisting the office end its inquiry and refuse to make its report public, in defiance of procedure.
The OCE’s independent board, which comprises numerous former lawmakers, voted to post its report on its own site in response.
Members’ claims that the OCE is “inappropriately swashbuckling isn’t true,” Kennedy said.
Most observers credit the office with being very professional and diligent, noting that it dismisses far more allegations than it forwards on to the Ethics Committee.
“The Goodlatte proposal will serve as an open invitation to members to violate the House ethics rules without concern that they will be held accountable for their improper conduct,” read a letter 30 watchdog groups sent Ryan Tuesday.
Although his fellow watchdogs are on high alert, Fitton said he thinks Republicans have learned their lesson — for now anyway.
“They thought they could get away with it and they made a miscalculation,” Fitton said. “Given the debacle of today I just don’t see it going forward,” he said of leadership’s assurance that it will revamp the OCE.
“I can’t rule it out but it’s unlikely,” Fitton said.
Brian said that even though the move came as most Americans were still in holiday mode, voters responded quickly and lit up House phone lines in protest.
“This somehow touched a nerve,” she said.
