GOP ethics lapse makes even Trump look good
The decision by majority Republicans in the U.S. House to neuter the chamber’s ethics police was as dumb as a pile of rocks. The independent Office of Congressional Ethics was created under Democrats’ leadership a few years back after the influence scandals involving lobbyists and members of both parties.
In a sign that 2017 may well become as crazy as last year’s campaigns, denunciations by House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top GOP leaders were not enough to deter the House Republican rebels. A a majority in the GOP caucus overruled the leaders in a secretive, Monday vote of 119-74 to ditch the ethics office, according to news reports.
The insurgents’ goal was to hand back the ethics enforcement work to a House committee that previously proved ineffective in countering bribery and corruption.
A sudden reversal came on Tuesday morning, the first day of the 115th Congress. This second GOP caucus vote — without dissent — dropped the watered-down ethics proposal from a package of rules for 2017-18 term.
Good government groups such as the League of Women Voters and Common Cause and Democrats including U.S. Rep. Denny Heck, D-Olympia, had cried foul over the initial vote.
“We earn the people’s trust by ensuring that every member of this body respects the duties of the office and exercises their responsibilities with the highest set of standards,” Heck said in a statement.
The second one was a smarter, saner decision. Deciding not to neuter the ethics watchdog doesn’t take Congress to a higher, more ethical plane. It’s just better than planning a nosedive.
Twitter messages from Donald Trump might have helped to halt this anti-ethics stampede at the cliff.
It doesn’t get much richer than seeing Trump act as an ethics spirit-guide. The president-elect shows little to no ability to discern the difference between his own business and a greater public interest.
After pledging to share his tax returns, to turn his businesses over to his children and also to drain the special-interests swamp at the U.S. Capitol, Trump has reversed course. He let his adult children in on meetings with foreign dignitaries from countries where the Trump business empire has pending projects, and he’s showed little real commitment to letting go of his business holdings.
Plus, Trump’s secretary of state nominee is an Exxon executive for secretary of state whose oil deals in Russia require Senate scrutiny to ensure there are not conflicts of interest or loyalty.
The result is that Republicans are giving fodder to Democrats who may reasonably fear that the GOP takeover of the government’s executive and legislative branches will make corruption easier.
At least for the moment, the House majority stepped back from the brink. And for a moment it distracted from Trump’s ethics issues.
But no one dare get distracted. It is now Trump’s turn to do the right thing — to disclose his conflicts of interest and then get rid of them.