Raising A Question of the Privileges of the House

Floor Speech

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Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to raise a question of the privileges of the House and offer a resolution previously noticed.

Mr. Speaker, in a representative democracy, as we have here, a Republic, if you will, transparency is essential to the operation of government, particularly transparency in the official behavior of the Members of this body, as well as the officers and employees of this body.

In 1995, due to the Congressional Accountability Act--which, by the way, was a good bill. We always say that Congress should be subject to the same laws as the rest of the country. Well, that is what the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act was about, saying that you can't discriminate or harass your employees just because you are a Member of Congress or an office of the House of Representatives.

In that sense, it was good, but it also set up a fund from which payments could be made to settle claims. Presumably, this is in the best interests of the victims of those claims.

This program went on for many years with a lot of opaqueness, and there wasn't much clarity in terms of what kind of claims were being paid out. Were they being paid out to settle claims against staff? Were they being paid out to settle claims against Members?

Occasionally, there would be reports from the offices that were responsible for administrating the law, but there just wasn't enough information in there. That is part of what my privileged resolution here today is about: getting more transparency into what happened in the first 20 years of this program.

In 2018, Congress sought to revise the transparency of this program and also to impose more accountability. I have a concern that the 2018 bill may not have been carefully drafted and may have left some loopholes that are now open.

Even though we get an annual report now that reports which offices in the House have paid out settlements and whether those settlements impose a requirement on the Member in that office to pay back that taxpayer money, what I have discovered is that there have been no reports that have reported that any Member of Congress has settled a claim against a staffer for which the Member of Congress is responsible for paying back that claim.

When I dig into the results, and also the language of the 2018 amendment to the Congressional Accountability Act, I see that ``covered payments'' refer to chapter A of title 2, but when you look at the Code: 2 U.S.C. 1415, harassment is qualified to two other sections of code, referring to race, gender, age, and discrimination against veterans, for instance. It is unclear to me if it covers physical or sexual harassment or other forms of sexual misconduct that may be settled through ethics investigations and then through the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights.

I believe it is necessary to have this report that my resolution requests. I believe it is important to the House of Representatives to have transparency so that people know there wasn't a mistake in the 2018 law--or maybe there was an intentional omission in the 2018 law where several claims could escape the new requirement in 2018 that Congressmen pay back certain settlements and that these certain settlements be reported.

It shouldn't require a long debate and a lot of explanation for a resolution that is only two pages. I would urge my colleagues to vote for this in the interest of transparency and openness. We need to know what has been going on here in the House of Representatives in order to convince and assure the people that we are conducting the people's business with the utmost integrity and treating the officers and employees of this institution with the respect that they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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