As one of their first actions in the new Congress, House Republicans are planning to significantly change the Office of Congressional Ethics, removing the entity’s independence, barring it from investigating anonymous complaints and even changing the group’s name.
Less than 24 hours before the House convenes and votes on its rules for the 115th Congress, Republicans adopted an amendment Monday night, 119 to 74, from Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that would fundamentally change the OCE. The independent ethics board investigates complaints against members and issues reports to the Ethics Committee.
Specifically, the amendment would place the OCE under the “oversight” of the lenient Ethics Committee and rename it the Office of Congressional Complaint Review. The new group would no longer be able to release information to the public, employ anyone “for a position involving communications with the public,” or directly contact law enforcement without approval. It would also be prohibited from investigating anonymous complaints.
Well obviously since Trump has vowed to “drain the swamp” there is no need for such duplication, right?
With No Warning, House Republicans Vote to Gut Independent Ethics Office
I hope the smart people around the SDMB can help me figure out the significance of this.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans, overriding their top leaders, voted on Monday to significantly curtail the power of an independent ethics office set up in 2008 in the aftermath of corruption scandals that sent three members of Congress to jail.
The move to effectively kill the Office of Congressional Ethics was not made public until late Monday, when Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced that the House Republican Conference had approved the change. There was no advance notice or debate on the measure.
“If the 115th Congress begins with rules amendments undermining O.C.E., it is setting itself up to be dogged by scandals and ethics issues for years and is returning the House to dark days when ethics violations were rampant and far too often tolerated,” the statement continued.
It’s a long-ish article.
Interesting that Ryan and McCarthy were against it, but the House Republicans passed it anyway. Makes you wonder who’s in charge over there.
Oh those guys want you to think they’re saying “Don’t! Stop!” But really, they’re saying “Don’t stop!”
Agreed. And I’m sure The Spineless Turtle was cheering them on.
And they’re just getting started PastTense .
Tweet from Matt Viser of the Boston Globe [@mviser ]
Leaper
January 3, 2017, 6:35am
7
Though I suppose it couldn’t be done any other way very easily, I find it weird that an ethics committee is so dependent on the very group it’s supposed to be watching.
Bone
January 3, 2017, 7:05am
8
Merged threads -unfortunately the titles were so similar I chose the wrong one at the top. Can’t undo.
…I said this in one of the pit threads shortly after the election was over.
At this very minute Trump is assembling a team of literally the worlds worst people to take control of the most powerful country in the history of the world. And he is literally re-writing the rulebook as he does it. They are going to steam-roll over all the fabled checks and balances unless people act now to combat it. Those people out on the streets protesting right now? They have figured it out. That 93% of black women who held their noses and voted Clinton? They had figured it out. Yes: Trump is going to be president of the United States. Its happened. Get over it. If we don’t all start doing something now it will be all over before we even know what is happening. It will be blitzkrieg. Shock and awe.
-snip-
But the Alt-Right now have control of the nuclear codes. They control congress and the senate. And they’ve got a fucking road map of what they are going to do. They have spent decades planning for this. Its going to happen quick.
Get your head in the game or get out. We all can’t afford to be pointing the finger and examining what went wrong and planning for the next election because by then the Trump Empire will have just shifted gears and will be rolling over everyone again.
I’m going to say it again in caps.
THEY’VE GOT A FUCKING ROAD MAP OF WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO. THEY HAVE SPENT DECADES PLANNING FOR THIS. ITS GOING TO HAPPEN QUICK.
In one flick of a pen the Independent Ethics Office is gone.
If you were wondering why “Opposite People” have been selected by Trump to be in his Cabinet: well this is why. Their job isn’t to run their various departments. Their job is to gut them and then turn them into something else.
Shock and awe. Blitzkrieg. The changes are going to happen so quickly that people are not going to notice. We don’t have a “24 hour news cycle” any more. We have “personally curated propaganda”. Trump and his team have figured this out. The rest of the world better catch up: and quickly.
This is Face’s complete lack of surprise. Get used to things like this on a near-daily basis.
Banquet_Bear:
…I said this in one of the pit threads shortly after the election was over.
I’m going to say it again in caps.
THEY’VE GOT A FUCKING ROAD MAP OF WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO. THEY HAVE SPENT DECADES PLANNING FOR THIS. ITS GOING TO HAPPEN QUICK.
In one flick of a pen the Independent Ethics Office is gone.
If you were wondering why “Opposite People” have been selected by Trump to be in his Cabinet: well this is why. Their job isn’t to run their various departments. Their job is to gut them and then turn them into something else.
Shock and awe. Blitzkrieg. The changes are going to happen so quickly that people are not going to notice. We don’t have a “24 hour news cycle” any more. We have “personally curated propaganda”. Trump and his team have figured this out. The rest of the world better catch up: and quickly.
Yup. The Republicans have been champing at the bit & will not waste this opportunity:
When the 115th Congress begins this week, with Republicans firmly in charge of the House and Senate, much of that legislation will form the basis of the most ambitious conservative policy agenda since the 1920s. And rather than a Democratic president standing in the way, a soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump seems ready to sign much of it into law.
The dynamic reflects just how ready Congress is to push through a conservative makeover of government, and how little Trump’s unpredictable, attention-grabbing style matters to the Republican game plan…
In 2012, Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist described the ideal president as “a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen” and “sign the legislation that has already been prepared.” In 2015, when Senate Republicans used procedural maneuvers to undermine a potential Democratic filibuster and vote to repeal the health-care law, it did not matter that President Obama’s White House stopped them: As the conservative advocacy group Heritage Action put it, the process was “a trial run for 2017, when we will hopefully have a President willing to sign a full repeal bill.”…
Obamacare is only the first victim. (There may be some difficulties with replacing it.) But they’ll also try to gut LBJ’s Great Society. (And Civil Rights? The Supremes already damaged Voting Rights.) Ever-loathsome Ted Cruz has gone farther back–he wants to undo FDR’s New Deal policies.
The feeding frenzy will be ugly. Crippling the Ethics Office will make things look neater.
elbows
January 3, 2017, 1:31pm
12
Could they, if they took a mind to, repeal the 14th amendment?
(Asks the Non American!)
Probably not. The only way to overturn a constitutional amendment is to pass a new amendment, and they would need the approval of 3/4 of the state legislatures to do that. Republicans control a large majority of state legislatures, but not 3/4 of them.
Quartz
January 3, 2017, 2:36pm
14
Do you have a better link than the Daily Mail of the US left?
Anyway, will the Democrats be voting against it? This seems very much like what happened over here in the UK. Anti-corruption measures were watered down with the tacit agreement of all sides.
More ability to Rat each other out ,I like it … (See William “The Freezer” Jefferson & Randy "Duke " Cunningham …
So they won’t.
There won’t be a replacement. The difficulty in replacing it is part of the plan.
Fretful_Porpentine:
Probably not. The only way to overturn a constitutional amendment is to pass a new amendment, and they would need the approval of 3/4 of the state legislatures to do that. Republicans control a large majority of state legislatures, but not 3/4 of them.
More than that. First, it needs 2/3 of the Senate and House to vote in favor. Unless we were to go the route of a full Constitutional Convention (not going to happen).
Quartz:
Do you have a better link than the Daily Mail of the US left?
Anyway, will the Democrats be voting against it? This seems very much like what happened over here in the UK. Anti-corruption measures were watered down with the tacit agreement of all sides.
Post #2 links to the Washington Post, or is that too left for you? This headline is in all the major media outlets today, so look around. It’s not fake news, if that’s what you’re worried about.
Now Paul Ryan apparently supports the move, and Trump opposes it. You can’t make this stuff up.
It’s all coordinated. It’s good cop/bad cop.