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House votes to reinstate Ethics Office
The House voted to reinstate the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) in the 113th Congress as the chamber adopted its rule changes for the next two years.
Under the new House rules, the OCE’s six board members no longer have term limits and are free to continue to serve in the next Congress.
The Republican-led move was made in an effort to avert the automatic termination of OCE board members Yvonne Burke, Jay Eagen, Karan English and Allison Hayward, who were set to have their terms expire at the end of the 112th Congress.
It was up to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to choose their replacements and approve of one another’s selections in order for the OCE to continue in the next Congress.
Instead, the House voted to adopt rules on Thursday evening that treat the outside OCE board as a standing committee while removing language from the OCE’s original resolution that limited the number of terms a board member could serve to four consecutive Congresses.
Watchdog groups on Thursday lauded the preservation of the OCE after waging a months-long campaign to get a firm commitment from House leaders that they would not let the outside ethics panel expire at the end of the 112th Congress.
The co-chairmen of the OCE, Porter Goss and David Skaggs, are expected to continue on in this Congress.
The OCE was created in 2008 at the prodding of Pelosi, then House Speaker, who had led a successful campaign to retake control of the chamber in part by pledging to “drain the swamp” of corruption on Capitol Hill.
When Boehner became Speaker in 2010, rumors swirled that Republicans might attempt to gut or eliminate the OCE. But the board remained intact, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) vowed to implement a “zero-tolerance” policy when it came to ethics violations.
Since then, members of both parties have faced ethics troubles, many of which have been investigated by the OCE.
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