The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Measure will help police lawmakers
PUBLISHED: April 24, 2008
It's not often that we're in favor of another layer of government. The Office of Congressional Ethics, approved recently by a House vote of 229-182, is an exception.
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After allegations of corruption, a sex scandal involving teenage House pages and several indictments, it seems clear that our federal lawmakers weren't doing enough to police themselves.
"We've adopted rules to increase transparency and accountability to the ethics process," said U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Royal Oak. "We've adopted the most sweeping lobbying reform measure since Watergate to help end the tight-knit relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers.
"Today we take another step by strengthening congressional ethics enforcement with the first independent body to investigate ethics allegations."
It will be the first time non-lawmakers will be selected to regulate behavior of House members.
The Office of Congressional Ethics will be led by a panel of six board members appointed jointly by the Speaker of the House and the House Minority Leader. The two elected officials will each nominate three OCE members. They must agree on the appointments.
The panel will have the authority to review allegations of ethics violations and, if the violations are found to have merit, will turn the complaint over to the House Ethics Committee, which will be required to act on the allegations.
While many say the OCE is just another costly layer of bureaucracy, we think improving the public trust in our federal government is worth it.
"The cat's out of the bag," Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat told the New York Times. "The people figured out long ago that there are too many members violating the public trust and they watched too many members sit idly by."
Levin, who voted in favor of the panel, noted in a press release that the OCE was supported by many public interest groups, including Common Cause, Democracy 21 and both the national and state chapters of Public Interest Research Group.
You could be cynical and say that the new OCE won't make much of a difference in Washington. In fact, you could say that "Congressional Ethics" is an oxymoron or a contradiction of terms.
But we believe there are some hardworking members of Congress, from both major political parties, who really do care about their country.
They also really want to do the right thing. However, every Washington scandal, even though it may not seen fair, also taints the honest, hard-working leaders.
They too, we believe, want a better mechanism of controlling and dealing with the unscrupulous behavior by their counterparts.
No, the OCE is not going to eliminate the immoral, criminal or scandalous activities of some members of Congress. There undoubtedly will always be those that want to take advantage of their positions in Washington.
But maybe, just maybe, we can cut down on the shameful activity or at least catch it sooner.
At any rate, we hope the new panel will gradually lead to more public respect of our elected House members.
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