Establishing an Office of Congressional Ethics

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I think we're on the precipice of an historic step forward in restoring the people's faith in this institution, but I understand how difficult this is to talk about. And giving the minority the benefit of the doubt, maybe that's why this House sat idly by for 12 years with no real major reforms to a very broken process.

But it's tough to talk about because it's not just about a broken process, it's about human nature. It's tough to talk about the failure of our ethics process because we're talking about the fallibility of all of us. It is against human nature, frankly, to rat out your friends, to investigate them, to punish your colleagues. And so that's why you can't just change people's perception of this place. You just can't fix the ethics process by tweaking the process that exists now. You have to admit the inherent fallibility of the ability for all of us to police ourselves and give that power to an independent body.

The cat is out of the bag, people figured this out long ago. There are too many Members that have violated the public trust, and they've watched too many other Members sit idly by.

Now, I, frankly, agree with my colleague Representative Space that this proposal could have been even a little bit stronger with the addition of subpoena power, but this is a major step forward and we should all support it. There is a generation of young people out there who stand on the precipice of losing all complete faith in government and in this institution. Tonight we have the chance to do right by them by correcting the mistakes of the past.

I thank Mr. Capuano and the task force for their hard work here, and I urge passage of the rule.

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