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House Democratic leaders failed to convince enough of their colleagues to support a leadership plan to impose a new layer of ethics scrutiny on lawmakers, forcing leaders late Wednesday to cancel a vote on the measure for the second time in as many weeks. Democratic leaders intended to bring up a revised ethics plan for a House vote Thursday, even though many of their colleagues continued to openly attack the proposal as a vehicle for partisan witch-hunts and a return to the open ethics warfare of the past. GOP leaders have openly derided the proposal for an independent ethics office made up of non-lawmakers and have said most Republicans would vote against it. Late Wednesday, it became clear that Democratic leaders had not convinced enough of their caucus members to be confident that the resolution would pass if the vote were held the next day. One senior Democratic aide said leaders would try to hold a vote on the resolution again early next week after talking to more members and increasing their support. Their efforts over the last week convinced one skeptical member to hold his nose and support the resolution. “I think there’s a real perception in the public that we’ve got to do something to fix the institution,” said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.). “I do think it will have unintended consequences, but in this climate we have to do something to address the ethics issue.” But leaders still have a long way to go to convince many Democrats who are dead-set against the idea, including several members of the Congressional Black Caucus. “To me it’s just going overboard,” said Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.). “I don’t see this as a necessity.” Earlier in the day, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said leaders were going forward with a vote even though he was unsure whether there was enough support for it to pass. Hoyer said he understood his caucus’s concern about giving outsiders a role in policing members of Congress ethical behavior. “It should not be surprising that members are concerned,” he said. “After all, we live in a fishbowl here in Congress.” Democratic leaders pressed the ethics issues in a caucus meeting Tuesday night and when members gathered on the floor to vote each time on Wednesday. They planned a House Rules Committee meeting for 4 p.m., but delayed it and eventually canceled it at 8 p.m., when it became clear after the last vote of the day that they still lacked the requisite votes to pass the resolution. Democrats wanted to avoid a repeat performance of last week’s Rules Committee meeting where Democrats revolted and openly trashed the idea of the independent ethics body, eventually forcing their leaders to yank it from the floor calendar the following day. It was a rare split with their leadership on a panel known as the “leadership’s committee” whose sole job is to package bills for votes on the House floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has made improving House ethics a key part of her leadership, and she tapped Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Mass.) to head a bipartisan ethics task force to weigh the creation of an outside ethics office investigate allegations against members and make recommendations to the ethics committee about whether the charge deserved further review. Capuano has been working with his Republican counterparts for more than a year on trying to find a way to restore credibility to the House, which has been sullied by several high-profile corruption scandals in recent years. Late last year, Republicans and Democrats parted ways with Capuano deciding to go ahead with a proposal that only attracted Democratic support. Capuano’s proposal would create a six-person board to oversee the new Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), with joint appointments if the Speaker and minority leader can agree on the choices. The office would initiate investigations and make recommendations to the full ethics committee, and no members or lobbyists could serve on the board. Democrats and Republicans had criticized a provision that would allow partisan appointments to the OCE’s board if the Speaker and minority leader could not agree and appoint the members jointly. Capuano changed that to allow only joint appointments. He also said the proposal would be changed so that reviews of a member’s ethical conduct could only be initiated pursuant to a bipartisan request. Many members had protested that the original proposal would allow the commission to refer ethics complaints to the ethics commission based on the recommendation of just two OCE board members from the same party. Republicans last week released their own ethics proposal, which called for changing the existing ethics committee instead of creating a new entity. |
