Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006--Continued

LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2006--Continued

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Ohio. I congratulate the Senator from Maine for her extraordinary work on the underlying lobby reform bill but respectfully disagree as to the appropriateness of adopting the Lieberman-Collins amendment.

This amendment creates a new Senate Office of Public Integrity with a Director, appointed for a 5-year term, by the President Pro Tempore upon the joint recommendation of the majority leader and minority leader. He or she would literally be ``an investigation czar.'' Let me just highlight a few of the most problematic aspects of this proposal.

No. 1 on the list of the ``Duties'' of the Director is, and I quote from page 3, ``(1) to investigate .....''. At its core the OPI is really the ``SBI''--``Senate Bureau of Integrity''--not even of intelligence.

To get the ball rolling, investigations by the Director are initiated by a complaint filed by anyone--a complaint without any requirements. In comparison, FEC complaints must be in ``in writing, signed and sworn to by the person filing such complaint, shall be notarized and shall be made under penalty of perjury and subject to the provisions of the criminal code.'' The complaint this integrity czar investigates doesn't have to meet any of those requirements--it could be filed via anonymous voicemail or on a beverage coaster--the name and address of the complainant isn't even required.

The only restriction on the complaint is that a complaint against a Member can't be ``accepted'' within 60 days of an election involving such Member. Thus, complaints can be filed against a Member's staff, and on the flip side, complaints made, maybe not accepted, but made during that 60-day period against a Member gives that Member no way to clear their name until after that election.

Making matters even more grim, these complaints are only against incumbents or their staff--so challengers can go hog wild in filing complaints and keeping their opponents under a cloud of suspicion--no matter how baseless. The only penalty for a frivolous complaint is they might not accept another one from that person, to the extent their identity is even known, and may incur costs resulting from the complaint. A very small price to pay for what would smear the good name of Members.

The Director is required to go to the Ethics Committee before getting his full blown power to ``administer oaths, issue subpoenas, compel attendance and production of documents and take depositions.'' However, it takes a roll call vote of 2/3 of the full committee to stop the Director's full blown investigation and the vesting of his full prosecutorial powers.

This amendment strips the bipartisan 6-member Ethics Committee of one of its core functions--enforcement--arguably its most important--and vests it all in one unelected individual. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Let me say I know there are many watchers of the Senate, as an institution, who may well believe that the Ethics Committee is a body constituted to go easy on Senators. I must respectfully suggest to the public and to our colleagues that the facts are otherwise.

I was vice chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and then subsequently chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee during a time when my party was in the majority in the Senate and had to, based on the facts in a particular case, offer a resolution to expel the chairman of the Finance Committee of the Senate from the Senate. That Member of the Senate subsequently resigned. But the vote in the Senate Ethics Committee was 6 to 0, on a bipartisan basis, to expel the chairman of the Finance Committee from the Senate. Surely, no one would consider that a slap on the wrist.

I cite another example. When the current Senate Democratic leader was chairman of the Ethics Committee, it issued such a scathing report on a bipartisan basis that a Member of his party chose to discontinue his effort to be reelected in the fall of 2002. The Senate Ethics Committee respects, first and foremost, this institution and its reputation. I think it has undertaken extraordinary efforts over the years in protecting Members from spurious complaints and being able to sort out a genuine wrongdoing and, when genuine wrongdoing appears, go after it and not tolerate it.

I particularly compliment the current chairman of the Ethics Committee, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Voinovich, who has done an extraordinary job in this regard as well.

So I hope our colleagues, on a bipartisan basis, will not support the Collins-Lieberman amendment. I think the Senate Ethics Committee can handle this job quite well in the future, as it has in the past.

I yield the floor.

http://thomas.loc.gov/