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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) worked to salvage plans for an independent ethics office Monday, seeking to win over a Democratic Caucus that has shown itself to be cool to the idea of more scrutiny of members’ activities.
Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), the author of the proposal, floated a batch of fixes in response to the many complaints that stalled the measure last week, while Pelosi announced that she plans another vote “soon.” Capuano said “every indication” points to a vote Thursday.
The ethics vote has emerged as a test of Pelosi’s ability to get her caucus to swallow increased ethics enforcement in the wake of the GOP scandals that helped propel Democrats into office. But there are signs that her push for reform, which also includes last year’s lobbying overhaul and increased scrutiny of earmarks, has instead provoked a backlash.
Even as she pressed for a vote last week, formal vote tallies indicated that roughly half her caucus was uncommitted or undecided on the legislation, raising suspicion in some Democratic quarters that Pelosi was pushing the bill to the floor expecting that members would be afraid to oppose it publicly.
Other aides suggested that Pelosi, faced with widespread dissent, pushed forward to force Republicans to release their ethics plan, which they’d kept close to the vest.
That theory was bolstered Monday when Pelosi announced her plan to ship the Republican proposal back to a task force for more work while preparing the Democratic proposal for a vote.
Pelosi’s efforts to save the ethics bill follow a stunning uprising last week at the House Rules Committee, where Pelosi’s handpicked allies lambasted it publicly. The proposal would allow outside ethics complaints against members of Congress to be screened by an independent ethics office.
The proposal, pieced together by a task force led by Capuano, was released late last year amid partisan recriminations and little if any Republican support.
House leaders pulled it before a Rules panel vote, saying they wanted time to review the Republican proposal. It would ditch the idea of an independent ethics office, and instead overhaul the existing ethics committee by adding former members of Congress to its membership.
But in a letter to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) sent Friday night, Pelosi indicated she wanted to study the GOP plan separately and not incorporate it into the bill. She proposed sending the Republican plan back to the ethics task force led by Capuano and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas).
She also suggested an ethics summit of sorts between herself, Boehner and the top Democrat and Republican on the evenly divided ethics committee.
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