House GOP will vote to weaken 'bipartisan watchdog' that holds members accountable: report
House Republicans are planning to vote to weaken the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), a ‘bipartisan watchdog’ that typically holds the members accountable, Huffpost reports.
These potential changes fall in tandem with the “rules package” the House agreed on last week following Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s grueling, days-long fight for House speakership.
With the newly instated rules, the OCE — which according to Huffpost, has resulted in resignations and criminal charges for GOP and Democratic House members — would establish term limits, automatically disqualifying three of the four Democrats currently serving. Not only that, but the office can only hire new staff within the next 30 days — a challenging feat considering current vacant seats in the Office and the usually tedious hiring process.
The OCE — considered “more independent and aggressive” than the existing House Ethics Committee — was established in 2007 by House Democrats under Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, in response to displays of misconduct among House GOP members. Since then, both new and veteran GOP members have tried to vote to exterminate the office following Donald Trump’s election win in 2017, but rolled back their efforts when the former president opposed the vote.
Advocates with the Campaign Legal Center, who are against the rule changes, wrote in a letter to Congress, “Together these changes weaken OCE to the point where the office would struggle to perform its core function, dismantling one of the only ways members of Congress are held accountable for ethics violations.” The group continued, “Past attempts to gut OCE have not only been detrimental to the public’s trust in Congress, but those moves have also been politically damaging and met with widespread public backlash. There is no reason to think this time will be any different.”
The group of advocates lauds the OCE as the “only effective congressional congressional ethics watchdog,” as it could have the power to investigate lawmakers who participated in coordinating the Jan. 6 insurrection. If it manages to dodge the changes, the office could also investigate the background of newly elected Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who is currently under investigation by a GOP New York district attorney.
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