OIL & WATER: House GOP moves to undermine Ethics Office

OIL & WATER: House GOP moves to undermine Ethics Office

It appears to many observers that the GOP is hellbent on causing chaos in the new session of Congress.

Instead of tackling inflation and corporate price gouging of the American people, Republicans instead want to expend their energy doing away with the Office of Congressional Ethics.

You may wonder why, particularly since the ethics panel has done next to nothing about some of the most disturbing ethical breaches in Congress in recent years.

The arm of the legislative body that has monitored ethics violations of its members for nearly 15 years is nonetheless under attack by Republicans who apparently want to govern without any ethical guardrails whatsoever.

Legal analyst Norm Eisen shed a light on the GOP’s plans to skirt the federal government’s oversight of legislators gone rogue.

The Office of Congressional Ethics is paramount to holding accountable those members of Congress who run afoul of the law — including the truth-deficient GOP Representative-Elect George Santos.

The newly-elected congressman has come under fire for the litany of lies he told on the campaign trail, including fabrications about his educational and work experience and the sources of his money.

Calls from both Republicans and Democrats to investigate Santos’ lack of transparency and his misleading of voters will play prominently in the next session.

But gutting the OCE will likely grind that process to a halt. And that’s exactly what the power-hungry GOP wants.

Even more surprising than the Republican party members in the House deciding to neuter the Office of Congressional Ethics is the fact that the GOP apparently thinks that there will be no consequences or public outcry over this incredibly corrupt move.

Hopefully, the media coverage today about their plans to abandon standards of ethical conduct for congresspeople will give them enough fear of electoral retribution due to their blatant attempts to avoid accountability, that they will reverse course.

After all, they will determine who will be the chair of the panel, and ultimately determine who gets referred to it.

Why court controversy by taking this radical step when they could just let the ethics panel simply be as quietly ineffective as it’s been the last six years?

But given the current composition of the GOP, they are more likely to go full steam ahead with their destruction of an important behavioral safety net.

Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick

Ty Ross

News journalist for Washington Press and Occupy Democrats.