House Republicans on Tuesday beat a hasty retreat from their effort to weaken a congressional watchdog agency, just minutes before the must-pass resolution was set to get a vote.
Both House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tried to convince GOP lawmakers Monday night not to advance a provision that would weaken the Office of Congressional Ethics by limiting its public disclosures and forcing it to operate under the jurisdiction of the official House Ethics Committee, which is run by lawmakers. Most Republicans ignored that warning, and approved the change Monday night.
But by Tuesday morning, several Democrats were criticizing the move, along with President-elect Trump, who weighed in on Twitter against the move. And at least one Republican said he wouldn’t support the change on the House floor.
“Independent review is an essential ingredient to good government,” said Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C. “The amendment adopted behind closed doors last night in conference gives too much power to the very elected officials at times in need of oversight.”
The opposition forced Republicans to hold an emergency meeting just 10 minutes before the noon start of the 115th session, in which some GOP aides were already predicting the change would be stripped out.
“It’s been stripped out,” Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., said as he left the meeting. “Everybody voted to do it.”
The provision was removed via a voice vote, unlike Monday night, when it was added to the rules package in a closed-door meeting after a roll call vote in which approximately two-thirds of the GOP rank-and-file voted to support it.
Republican leaders didn’t back the change, and on Tuesday they promised that the ten-member, bipartisan House Ethics Committee will examine reforming the OCE, with recommendations due before the August recess. Lawmakers stripped it out after receiving dozens of calls to their offices and watching the backlash unfold on television and social media.
“Bad politics,” Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said. “I understand the concern, but to do it behind closed doors was not the way to do it. The public needs to know what we are doing and why we are doing it.”
Just moments before the GOP pulled back the change, McCarthy, refused to say whether the rules package for the 115th Congress would survive a floor vote this afternoon. Instead, he referred reporters to the House Whip operation, which did not respond to an inquiry from the Washington Examiner.
“I made an argument, I was one of the first to the mics, why I didn’t think this was the best time to do it,” McCarthy said. “But, this is what is moving forward right now.”
McCarthy said the proposed changes reflected some of the findings of a bipartisan review of the OCE, which was established in 2008 as a venue for outside groups to file ethics complaints against lawmakers.
Both McCarthy and Ryan said the changes would not weaken the OCE, which under the new rule would be renamed the “Office of Congressional Complaint Review.”
Republicans and some Democrats have complained about the OCE because it allows outside partisan groups to file complaints and prompt investigations that drag on for months.
McCarthy disputed headlines declaring the panel has been stripped of independence, even though the provision gives the House Ethics Committee the power to stop the group’s investigations. “It will be investigating independently and will be forwarding on to the Ethics Committee just as it was before,” McCarthy argued.
Both liberal and conservative outside watchdog groups condemned the move, which would essentially weaken their power to instigate investigations.
“This drive-by effort to eliminate the Office of Congressional Ethics, which provides appropriate independence and transparency to the House ethics process, is a poor way for the Republican majority to begin ‘draining the swamp,'” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative Judicial Watch, said Tuesday.
The OCE was established eight years ago by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. following a string of congressional corruption scandals.
It was created to bolster ethics policing that many believe had been non-existent in the House, where only lawmakers can file complaints with the bipartisan House Ethics Committee.
