Why has Congress stalled on fixing its sexual misconduct issue?

Earlier this year, it seemed as if Congress was actually going to do something to make it harder for lawmakers to use their power for sex and to prevent an environment where their top aides do the same.

The House of Representatives voted in February to change decades-old procedures for how staffers report sexual harassment and assault accusations, with the goal of making it easier for a staffer to bring an accusation against a lawmaker.

“It’s a remarkable turn of events for a Congress that, up until a few months ago, had never required its members to go through sexual harassment training. Ever,” I wrote then.

But that was February, shortly after eight lawmakers in Congress lost their jobs or announced they wouldn’t run for re-election amid sexual misconduct allegations.

Nearly two months later, Congress hasn’t moved a millimeter to update its sexual harassment policies.

For most of those changes to go into effect, the Senate has to also pass the bill. The Senate didn’t take it up right after the House sent it over, but advocates were hopeful it would slide into a must-pass spending bill lawmakers passed earlier this month. It didn’t.

And now it’s a very real possibility that Congress may not pass any kind of legislation to change its culture of sexual harassment anytime soon.

That’s in spite of lawmakers saying sexual misconduct is rampant on Capitol Hill. That’s in spite of every single female senator demanding this week that Senate leaders allow votes on legislation to improve the system.

That’s also in spite of horrifying news of misconduct still coming out of Capitol Hill.

The Connecticut Post and The Washington Post’s Elise Viebeck reported this week that a congresswoman let her chief of staff stay on the job for three months after she learned he allegedly threatened to kill someone who had worked in the office. Viebeck wrote:

“The threat from Rep. Elizabeth Esty’s chief of staff arrived in a voice mail.

“‘You better (expletive) reply to me or I will (expletive) kill you,’ Tony Baker said in the May 5, 2016, recording left for Anna Kain, a former Esty aide Baker had once dated.”

And as Etsy herself acknowledged to Viebeck, the rules aren’t set up to handle her chief of staff’s alleged misconduct — or her handling of it. W

hile the aide isn’t accused of sexual misconduct, his alleged actions fall under the general umbrella, given he’s accused of threatening, yelling and even punching someone he dated in the office.

The congresswoman said she felt pressured to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which kept him on longer.

And she said the system just doesn’t work to quickly protect staffers in harm’s way, even if she wanted to.

“Clearly that’s what it’s all set up to do — to protect the member of Congress whose bad behavior caused the problem,” Esty told Viebeck.

OK, so even a congresswoman in the headlines for doing something wrong with regard to misconduct in the workplace is acknowledging the rules need to change.

Exactly why Congress seems to have stalled on officially making those changes is hard to pin down. Congress is more or less done with passing major legislation for the rest of this year.

That doesn’t mean it can’t pass this rules change, which only affects lawmakers and those who work for them. But Congress also is focused on re-election in November, so any legislation that doesn’t already have momentum probably won’t suddenly get attention.

Some lawmakers have gone so far as to accuse Senate leaders of trying to protect their colleagues. When advocates saw their last, best chance for this rules change to become law fade away with the spending bill, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., offered this: “I can’t think of any legitimate reason to remove this language other than to protect members of Congress over taxpayers and congressional employees.”

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the senator who has the power to bring bills up for a vote, didn’t immediately respond.

It sounds like changing the sexual harassment rules just wasn’t a priority for lawmakers this spring. And as the momentum from last year’s #MeToo movement fades from the public eye, it’s possible this won’t be a priority this summer or fall, either.

The question for advocates remains the same as when this whole movement started: When, if ever, will Congress move to lead on making workplace culture safer for women? Amber Phillips writes about politics for The Fix.