$QUEEZE PLAY VS. SLEAZE
Move to make sex-harass pols pay and come clean
Members of Congress who settle harassment cases would be required to pay out of their own pockets and make the settlements public under new bipartisan legislation introduced Wednesday.
Under current procedures, taxpayers pick up the tab and victims have to stay silent.
The bill would also eliminate nondisclosure agreements that victims are now required to sign.
“For all intents and purposes, a staffer in the Capitol is powerless and gagged,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the bill’s sponsor, said at a press conference.
But Speier is still keeping secret the identities of the two members of Congress she labeled sexual harassers on Tuesday.
Asked if she’s confronted the creeps, she replied: “It’s not my role to approach them . . . The victims are the ones who do not want this exposed.”
During a congressional hearing Tuesday, Speier said one Republican and one Democratic lawmaker are known sexual harassers.
And Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) shared a story about a former staffer who dropped off documents to a third congressman who exposed his genitals.
Comstock said the name of the congressman wasn’t shared with her.
She also said she knows of other former congressional staffers, including friends of hers, who were sexually harassed but never came forward.
But now they’re trying to come to terms with what happened.
“I talked to a woman last night in my district who reached out because she had been a victim,” Comstock, a former congressional staffer herself, told The Post.
“I know friends of mine who still don’t talk [about being harassed]. They haven’t gone public or told anybody and don’t want anyone to know.”
It’s unknown how common sexual harassment is at the Capitol, since the current reporting system is tilted to favor the accused and complaints and findings are kept secret.
Speier said Congress has settled 260 cases of workplace discrimination, which includes sexual harassment, over the last 20 years at a cost of $15 million.
Speier’s refusal to disclose names isn’t sitting well with some colleagues.
“I think she should name names,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Post. “There are 36 male members [from California]. I’m assuming she’s talking about a male member . . . I’m comfortable that I will not be one of the names.”
Issa drew comparisons to Sen. Joseph McCarthy lobbing unsubstantiated allegations during the 1950s.
“It’s like McCarthy who is accusing that there are Communists and I have a list,” Issa said. “That’s not the right way to do it. If she has an ethics complaint, she had an obligation to take that ethics complaint to the appropriate committee of Congress and if she feels it’s necessary to go public, she should go fully public.”
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH), who said she was sexually assaulted as a congressional staffer, said she hasn’t asked Speier for the names, but believes the creeps are probably “a little nervous and anxious.”
“Everybody should be on notice now,” Kuster said. “Nobody should have any doubt in their mind about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.”
Speier’s legislation would require mandatory sexual harassment training for lawmakers and staff, provide protections for interns and pages, and survey staffers every two years to measure the level of harassment on Capitol Hill.