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An Independent Office of Congressional Ethics

March 12th, 2008
By PAUL SILVER


The Common Cause Blog celebrates Ethics: VICTORY.

The House voted to have this independent office because of the perception by the public that colleagues may not be very forceful in dealing with ethics issues that they themselves might be abusing. It seems to me to be a good thing because as it becomes harder to rationalize certain behaviors as ethical it becomes easier to simply avoid the appearance of impropriety. This is another step in the right direction of a more trustworthy government.

…the Speaker deserves whatever credit she gets for this and probably more. If Nancy Pelosi hadn’t initiated the ethics task force, decided that her caucus had to implement its suggestion of an independent enforcement body, and most importantly twisted arms of her fellow Democrats, this wouldn’t have happened. Plenty of members of the Democratic and Republican caucuses wavered on this and hoped it would go away. Pelosi wouldn’t let that happen, and neither would we. And thank goodness it didn’t.

And the Blog had this quote in response to the lawmakers who thought the Legislators can police themselves just fine Here

“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,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, the majority leader.

Bravo Speaker Pelosi and those who listened to the people. Now if the Democrats can take the next step and begin deliberation on Redistricting and Campaign Finance Reform to level the playing field for all candidates ;-)



This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 10:52 am and is filed under Congress. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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