HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi's special task force on ethics enforcement toiled for a year to create an independent body to review ethical breaches by House members, only to have it sabotaged Wednesday on the eve of a vote to adopt the recommendations. The bipartisan bludgeoning of the proposed new ethics panel leaves the House in bad odor with the voters. House leaders need to go back at the issue as soon as possible, lest the body's dismal approval ratings sink even further.
It is hard to see what features of the proposal can still be compromised away, mild as it was to begin with. True, the House has long resisted any outside investigator, claiming the US Constitution requires Congress to police itself. But the six-member Office for Congressional Ethics that the task force suggested would be less like a gun-toting sheriff and more like a traffic cop, initiating reviews of wrongdoing but then only referring them for further action to the House Ethics Committee - which is composed of House members.
Indeed, the task force report explicitly says that any referral by the new board "may not contain any conclusions regarding the validity of the allegations upon which it is based or the guilt or innocence of the individual who is the subject of the review." The board would not have subpoena power, and it could not investigate complaints from individual citizens or outside groups.
Representative Michael Capuano, who chaired the task force for Pelosi, hopes the new rules would inject transparency, independence, and urgency into the clubby Capitol Hill system. The proposals set strict time limits for the initial reviews and the more formal investigations by the Ethics Committee. Importantly, the recommendations also require the Ethics Committee to make an official public comment on the disposition of each case, including the independent board's findings, unless it finds no substantial wrongdoing. It would be the first time the Ethics Committee would be required to make a public disclosure in most cases.
"Right now," Capuano says, "the American people do not have confidence that the right thing will be done in the congressional ethics arena." Just so. A series of recent scandals involving House members badly tarnished the institution, not just because of the official wrongdoing but because the House leadership seemed to do so little about it.
Republicans on Capuano's task force did not sign on to the recommendations, and House minority leader John Boehner complained Wednesday that it only adds a layer of bureaucracy. But we hope the full House gives the plan another chance and that Boehner and Pelosi turn their attention to appointing the best people to the panel. Only individuals of the highest integrity and grit can make the new board a powerful watchdog, and not another Capitol Hill poodle.
