To increase the public trust in Congress, the House has just passed H.Res. 895, to strengthen congressional ethics enforcement with a new Office of Congressional Ethics. This will bring greater accountability and transparency to the ethics enforcement process by requiring, for the first time in history, an independent review of alleged ethics violations by individuals who are not Members of Congress. Rep. Betty Sutton (OH-13) managed debate on this landmark rule.
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| Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "I have deep respect for what Mr. Capuano striving to work in a bipartisan way has tried to achieve. Adopting the Capuano task force recommendations will provide the public and the House with the assurance that credible, credible allegations of wrongdoing will be addressed by the ethics committee in a timely fashion. I emphasize the word 'credible' because I have no doubt that the main target of this -- who do you think the main target of any outside groups to this group will be? You're looking at her. You are looking at her. But I am willing to take that risk because I also trust -- yes, I also trust my colleagues, I also trust that this group will rid itself of frivolous, baseless complaints." |
| Leader Steny Hoyer: "I take a back seat to no one in loving this institution... the issue is not whether we have respect for one another. Too often it is demonstrable on this floor, that we don't. The issue is, will the American people have respect for us. That is the issue. That is the critical issue that confronts us this evening. Not because any of us are pointing fingers at anybody else in this House, but unless you were sound asleep prior to the last election, unless you were living in another country, another land in another time, you know what the people thought about this, the People's House that we love. And that, my friends, is why we're in the majority. Because the people thought changes were necessary in this House. The people asked for change. They asked for accountability." |
| Rep. Michael Capuano (MA-08): "And I thank the members of the freshman class of 2006. They are the ones who kept the pressure on us to try to fix our ethics rules. They came here on the backs of public discontent with our actions. And they have kept our feet to the fire, and I thank them for that." |
| Rep. Chris Murphy (CT-05): "But I understand how difficult this is to talk about. Given the minority the benefit of the doubt, maybe that's why this House sat idly by for 12 years with no real major reforms to a very broken process. But it's tough to talk about because it's not just about a broken process. It's about human nature. It's tough to talk about the failure of ethics process because we are talking about the fallibility of all of us. it's against human nature, frankly, to rat out your friends. to investigate them. To punish your colleagues. That's why you can't just change people's perception of this place. You just can't fix the ethics process by tweaking the process that exists now. You have to admit the inherent fallibility of the ability for all of us to police ourselves and give that power to an independent body." |
| Rep. Paul Hodes (NH-02): "For years, the former congressional leadership eroded the faith of the American people through corruption, dishonesty and abuse of power. I came into office pledging to restore the people's trust and as stewards of the public trust, we must hold Congress to the highest standard and end the abuses of the past. This legislation before us is an important step in restoring the trust of the people we serve in this body. It puts ethics violations in the hands of an independent, nonpartisan board, and that is the right way to give the american people the confidence that any corruption will be investigated fairly and thoroughly." |