Broken Ethics Process Again at the Forefront

October 19, 2006
By Mary G. Wilson,
Special to Roll Call

With another new ethics scandal breaking in Congress, we can see, once again, a fundamental problem. The Congressional ethics enforcement process is broken.

In the wake of the disgraceful conduct of a House Member — former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who was caught making improper advances to a 16-year-old House page — and questions about how the House leadership dealt with allegations of that conduct, the leadership referred the matter to its very own Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

This is the same bipartisan House ethics committee that refused to investigate Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), a House Member at the center of the Jack Abramoff scandal; refused to investigate then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who resigned under a cloud of shame; and refused to take action on a host of other Members of Congress who have been implicated in one way or another during the scandal-plagued 109th Congress.

Let’s take a closer look at the House ethics committee. The committee at one time might have provided a true enforcement mechanism to guard against corruption or predatory personal behavior. It at one time might have protected the House, its leadership and its Members from the errant activities of individual Members. But it does not do so today.

For example, it used to be possible for individuals who were not Members of the House to bring matters to the ethics committee in a way that spurred action. That is how former Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) and others saw their activities brought before the committee. But that is no longer possible. Now, because of self-serving steps taken by the House, only Members can file a complaint.

The current scandal demonstrates the problem with this rule. According to recent accounts in the media, it appears that many people knew about Foley’s inappropriate conduct. It even seems that the pages themselves warned each other to avoid him. But none of these people could initiate a formal investigation by the House ethics committee. All they could do was bring the matter to the attention of a House Member and hope that he or she would take the action through the formal ethics committee process.

That might have worked, except for an unwritten “truce” that appears to have been honored between the political parties in the House. That truce — apparently designed to prevent retaliatory ethics complaints by one party against the other — resulted in Members not bringing complaints to the ethics committee at all. Thus there is no meaningful official mechanism for enforcing the simple rules of ethics that we expect from our Representatives.

Proposals to improve the ethics process have been suggested, most notably legislation introduced by Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.). Their bill creates an Office of Public Integrity, allows outside complaints and establishes an independent fact-finding process.

Shays and Meehan had hoped to offer these reforms as part of the debate last spring on lobbying-reform legislation, but they were prevented from doing so by the House leadership, which used the rules to block a vote on these ethics reforms.

Even now, with the Foley matter referred to the House ethics committee, there is no independent investigative process. There is no outside counsel. Instead, Members of Congress appointed by the leadership of both parties will be looking at the handling of the affair, which includes allegations about the actions of their colleagues and the Speaker of the House.

In recent weeks, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has promised early votes on the Democrats’ lobbying and ethics legislation if they take control of the House and she is elected Speaker. For this she deserves credit.

But here’s the catch: The Democrats’ legislation does not include the Shays-Meehan reforms that allow outside complaints and set up independent fact-finding procedures as part of the ethics process. Once again, there seems to be bipartisan agreement to keep the process broken. Instead, the leaders of both political parties in the House should pledge now to support real reform, no matter who is Speaker.

Mary G. Wilson is president of the League of Women Voters of the United States.