In this 2015 photo, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., listens to testimony on Capitol Hill in Washington. House Republicans on Monday, Jan. 2, 2017, voted to eviscerate the Office of Congressional Ethics. Under the ethics change pushed by Goodlatte, the independent body would fall under the control of the House Ethics Committee, which is run by lawmakers. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
Update from the Associated Press: House Republicans abruptly reversed themselves Tuesday under pressure from President-elect Donald Trump and dropped plans to gut an independent congressional ethics board.
The dizzying about-face came as lawmakers convened for the first day of the 115th Congress, an occasion normally reserved for pomp and ceremony under the Capitol Dome. Instead, House Republicans found themselves under attack not only from Democrats but from their new president, over their secretive move Monday to neuter the independent Office of Congressional Ethics and place it under lawmakers’ control.
GOP leaders scrambled to contain the damage, and within hours of Trump registering his criticism on Twitter, they called an emergency meeting of House Republicans where lawmakers voted without opposition to undo the change.
The episode, coming even before the new Congress had convened and lawmakers were sworn in, was a powerful illustration of the sway Trump may hold over his party in a Washington that will be fully under Republican control for the first time in a decade. Lawmakers who’ve felt unfairly targeted by the ethics office had defied their own House GOP leaders with their initial vote to gut the body, but once Trump weighed in they backpedaled immediately.
“With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority,” Trump had asked over Twitter Tuesday morning, in an objection that appeared focused more on timing than on substance. Trump, who will take office later this month, said the focus should be on tax reform and health care, and included the hash-tag #DTS, for “Drain the Swamp,” his oft-repeated campaign promise to bring change to Washington.
Democrats and even many Republicans were quick to point out that the lawmakers’ plans for their ethics watchdog flew in the face of that notion. The measure was part of a rules package that faced a vote in the full House later Tuesday and looked like it could fail after Trump registered his objections.
“We were elected on a promise to drain the swamp and starting the session by relaxing ethics rules is a very bad start,” said GOP Rep. Tom McClintock of California.
Said GOP Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma: “People didn’t want this story on opening day.”
(ORIGINAL REPORT FROM TELESUR) — One of the first orders of business for the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives as they reconvene Tuesday is to weaken the assembly’s independent ethics body by giving lawmakers more oversight over the corruption watchdog, which critics say is an attempt to shield themselves as they kick off a new legislative session in the era of President-elect Donald Trump.
As they returned to Washington following a holiday break, House Republicans voted Monday in a closed-door meeting to place the Office of Congressional Ethics under the oversight of the House Ethics Committee, giving lawmakers greater control over an independent body charged with investigating their own behavior.
The measure was added to a broader rules package that is expected to pass when the House formally convenes Tuesday.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who created the ethics office amidst complaints that lawmakers were unable to effectively police themselves, said Republicans were eliminating the only independent body charged with monitoring their actions.
“Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress,” Pelosi said in a statement after the closed-door meeting Monday.
The ethics office was created in 2008 following several corruption scandals, but the non-partisan body did not have the authority to punish lawmakers it deemed corrupt.
The body will now have to deliver its reports to lawmakers, rather than releasing them directly to the public, according to a summary released by Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte. It will be renamed the Office of Congressional Complaint Review.
The measure also defied the Republican leadership as House speaker Paul Ryan had opposed changing ethics rules. President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to “drain the swamp” in Washington by cracking down on corruption.
Several independent corruption monitors have sounded alarm over the controversial measure. Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, chair and vice chair of the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, slammed the measure as an assault on the people’s right to hold their representatives accountable.
“Undermining the independence of the House’s Office of Congressional Ethics would create a serious risk to members of Congress, who rely on OCE for fair, non-partisan investigations, and to the American people, who expect their representatives to meet their legal and ethical obligations,” Eisen and Painter said in a joint statement.
The move comes as Republicans who control both houses of Congress are poised to repeal major portions of President Barack Obama’s health and environmental regulations and enact a conservative agenda once Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
Gutting the independent ethics body, Eisen and Painter further warned, would see the House returning to the “dark days when ethics violations were rampant and far too often tolerated.”
© teleSUR
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