House GOP shouldn’t get a pass on ethics
Those believing Gilded Age chicanery to be a thing of the past were dealt a blow this week when literally, the first action the new House of Representatives undertook was to weaken an independent ethics panel charged with investigating congressional misconduct. After near universal public rebuke, the measure was pulled Tuesday. But the credit the House gets for yanking the plan shouldn’t outweigh the derision it earned for forwarding it in the first place.
Under the changes, the Office of Congressional Ethics would have been placed under the purview of the lawmaker-controlled House Ethics Committee. Among other proposed limits, the new office would have been prevented from pursuing anonymous complaints against House members.
The move was so brazen, even ethically challenged Presidentelect Donald Trump was moved to disapprove — of the timing, at least. “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the independent ethics watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their No. 1 act and priority?” Trump tweeted.
If you make Trump look like the ethical platinum standard, you have done what his army of phony spokesmen could never accomplish. It’s the type of disrespect for the common voter that led working-class people to believe a man who rides to work in a golden elevator represent their best interests. (In opposing the ethics rule change, Trump actually joined convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose call for more strident investigations is like Wile E. Coyote calling for a ban on selling exploding birdseed.)
And though the proposal has been booted, even proposing a mechanism to escape investigation is detrimental to the goals of what the GOP wants to accomplish. It is as if Republicans in the House want to color everything they do with a “corruption” Snapchat filter.
Throughout the elections, Republicans went to voters and told them all the important things that had to be done right away. Voters had to send conservatives to the Capitol to reform the tax code, repeal Obamacare, and strengthen immigration limits. Yet the Republicans’ first priority is to make sure they aren’t investigated enough for Gilded Agestyle bribery?
Republicans have a unique opportunity to forward positive bills that will alter the course of America. But now the question will always linger: “Exactly what are they doing that they didn’t think merited investigation?”
Such questions could continue to impugn the public’s perception of Congress and give voters the idea that 19th century-style corruption is still afoot. Mark Twain once wrote of a fictional burglar named Murphy who complained to his local newspaper for reporting that he had “served one term in the penitentiary and also one in the U.S. Senate.”
“The latter statement is untrue and does me great injustice,” Murphy wrote.