House Republicans will vote to cripple the Office of Congressional Ethics, a bipartisan watchdog whose work has led to resignations and criminal charges for members of both political parties.
The provisions affecting the office are included in the package of rules for the new Congress that the House is expected to approve on Monday, three days after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ended his week-long battle to become Speaker of the House.
The new rules will institute term limits for members of the presidential council, making three of the body’s four Democratic members immediately ineligible. It also stipulates that the office is only allowed to hire staff for the next 30 days, a difficult task given both board vacancies and the federal government’s typically cumbersome hiring processes.
The effect, advocates warned, will be to paralyze perhaps the only effective congressional ethics watchdog. The office may soon investigate the role lawmakers played in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, and may also look into the finances and fundraising of incoming Rep. George Santos (RN.Y.).
Good governance advocates and liberals have spent the past week trying to get the provisions out of the package, with no sign of progress or success. Twenty-four groups, led by the Campaign Legal Centre, sent a letter to members last week asking them to keep the office intact.
“Together, these changes weaken the OCE to the point where the office would struggle to perform its primary function, dismantling one of the only ways members of Congress are held accountable for ethics violations,” the groups wrote. “Previous attempts to gut the OCE not only damaged public confidence in Congress, but those moves were also politically damaging and met with widespread public backlash. There’s no reason to think this time will be any different.”
End Citizens United, a Democratic campaign finance reform group, asked the OCE to investigate whether McCarthy used government resources to direct the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC controlled by his allies, to reach a settlement with the Club for Growth, a hard conservative. group. .
The deal, in which CLF agreed to no longer endorse candidates in open primaries in safe GOP districts, prompted the Club for Growth to drop its opposition to McCarthy’s ascension to speaker.
During its 16-year existence, the office has investigated everything from paid travel by companies (D-Rep. Charles Rangel of New York) to insider dealings of members of Congress (GOP Rep. Chris Collins of New York), who led to censor the courtroom, resignations and criminal investigations.
Democrats, led by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, created the office in 2007 after campaigning against a series of scandals involving House Republicans. The office works with the House Ethics Committee, but is seen as more independent and aggressive.
Republicans have already tried to kill the office. In 2017, after former President Donald Trump’s victory, they voted for the rules package only to back down after Trump voiced his opposition.
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