Ethics Reform

Floor Speech

Mr. QUIGLEY. Mr. Speaker, Louis Brandeis said sunlight is the best disinfectant. So with ethics once more in the headlines, I think it's worth asking how far we've come in bringing light to the people's House.

This is not a partisan issue. Corruption votes both ways. It is, rather, an issue of trust. These teams, more than ever, demand effective government, yet it is very hard to govern effectively without the public's trust. We need to complete the active ethics investigations currently being considered in this House, and we need to eliminate the conditions which contributed to these violations in the first place.

I've introduced two measures to eliminate pay-to-play activities at both the State and Federal level. H.R. 614 would prohibit earmarks to for-profit entities, and H.R. 3427 would eliminate Federal provisions which prevent States like Illinois from cleaning up their act on pay-to-play corruption.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting both of these measures.

Source