The GOP changes that they wanted to make would have weakened the office. Did you read the initial changes they tried to make? What did you see that you think improved independent oversight?
You've attempted to reverse my question to you. I asked:
Why do you feel this committee was necessary when neither the Senate nor the White House had them, when there will still be a bipartisan ethics committee and given that criminal ethics violations can still be prosecuted by state and local law enforcement agencies? The Office of Congressional Ethics has two powers:
- issue public reports (with no enforcement power);
- refer their findings to the House Ethics Committee, which had (and has) the power to issue punishment, like fines and formal reprimands by the full House.
Under the proposed change, the only real difference was/is that the reports weren't public until they were reviewed by the Ethics Committee.
Furthermore, as I touched on above, there are other entities, also independent of Congress, that can investigate these sorts of allegations, with a lot more resources and power:
- the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
- the Department of Justice (including) U.S. Attorneys around the country;
- local law enforcement
And, in fact, these independent agencies have snared congressmen many times over the years. You have actually written about them in the past (at least when the snared members of Congress were republican).
Furthermore, as noted (again) above, this office exists in only one house of one branch of government. There is no similar office for the executive or even the Senate.
So, I'll re-ask the question in a different way: what was being proposed that gutted ethics?
