Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Ben Sklar/Getty Images, Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images, Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
Tuesday’s tempest is/was the House Republican caucus’ secret-ballot vote to seize power from the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics, which was launched in 2008, by bringing it under the complete control of the House Ethics Committee. This seemed on its face like a dubious move—the foxes voting to put themselves in charge of the henhouse—and when even Donald Trump got in on the immediate backlash against it, the caucus backed down. For now, the OCE will remain as is.
The question: Is this really a victory for the cause of public integrity, or just a symbolic way for D.C. Republicans to avoid bad headlines without having to really put anything at risk? If you’re as cynical as I am, the answer may surprise you!
… Which is because the answer, according to people who would know, is that the OCE is actually a useful instrument in the perpetual struggle to keep politicians from accepting literally anything a lobbyist offers them in exchange for literally anything a lobbyist wants. Heed for example the words of this 2014 endorsement of the OCE’s work by the nonpartisan Public Citizen watchdog group, which notes that the OCE—which autonomously investigates potential ethical violations before releasing its findings publicly and to the House Ethics Committee—appears to have provoked said committee, to an unprecedented degree, into actually doing its job:
From 2006 through 2008, the three years highlighted by the Abramoff scandal that resulted in nearly two dozen convictions or guilty pleas by the Department of Justice, the House Ethics Committee … issued only five disciplinary actions. But the House Ethics Committee has issued 20 disciplinary actions between 2009 and 2014, largely done with the help of the investigations and transparency of OCE.
Or take it from Jack Abramoff himself, the Republican mega-lobbyist referenced by Public Citizen, whose downfall and imprisonment for corruption-related crimes took down House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (who resigned amid an investigation that would put two of his aides in prison) and veteran Ohio GOP Rep. Bob Ney (who also did time in the federal pen). Abramoff, who has made a post-jail niche for himself as an expert on lobbying reform, told Politico on Tuesday that “moving to diminish oversight is exactly the opposite of what Congress should be doing” to prevent corruption. (Here’s a good interview he did with the Huffington Post in 2011 about what might actually be done to drain the swamp. One of the first steps: Ban anyone who has ever served or worked in Congress from ever working in D.C. as a lobbyist.)
Here’s what Ney, who like Abramoff has atoned for his crimes and written about the system that abetted them, wrote:
The House Republicans should not have done this and also the way they did it without announcing it is not a public policy to be proud of … the independent committee serves a valuable purpose and could have been tweaked but this was not a tweak. It was a box of dynamite.
(There’s more here about what he sees as the OCE’s legitimate flaw, which is that it releases material about allegations against individuals even after it’s cleared them.)
The verdict, then: OCE good, eliminating OCE bad, not eliminating OCE good.
Incidentally, then-Sen. Barack Obama introduced a bill in 2006 that would have established an “Office of Public Integrity” that would serve the same role in the Senate as the OCE serves in the House. (It failed. Get those $$$$, senators!)
