Upholding Congress’s Commitment to Real Reform By U.S. Senator Russ Feingold January 30, 2007 What is it going to take to clean up Congress? That’s the question people across the country have been asking in the wake of an election that, in addition to Iraq, was dominated by congressional scandals. Voters were appalled by the corruption of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Representatives Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham, among others, and they issued a clear call for ethics reform. In the last Congress, despite a host of congressional scandals on front pages across the country, reform efforts stalled. The conventional wisdom was that the voters didn’t care; at least that’s what the defenders of the status quo assured themselves. But they were wrong. Democrats were swept into the majority by an electorate fed up with corruption. They heard the wishes of the American people loud and clear: that they want Congress to clean up its act by passing tough ethics legislation, and to do it quickly. Working together, Democrats and Republican have already moved quickly to pass ethics reforms in the new Congress. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept her promise to pass this legislation in the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made ethics reform the first order of business in the Senate. I am pleased that both the Senate and House have passed some of the toughest ethics reform legislation in the history of our Congress. We have demonstrated to the American people that members of Congress finally understand how bad it looks to accept a free trip to a fancy resort, a free flight on a fancy corporate jet, or a free meal from a lobbyist at a fancy restaurant. But now that we have strengthened the rules, we should make sure that an independent outside agency is there to enforce them. We have to make sure that members of Congress who break the new rules are punished for their actions, and an outside body is much better suited to strict enforcement than members themselves. As members of the House and Senate meet to hammer out the differences between their bills, I will continue to push for adoption of the strongest possible reforms. The bill that lands on the president’s desk should be as tough as possible to crack down on the abuses that have undermined the integrity of the Congress.