Obama, Feingold unveil historic ethics legislation

A bill that would create an independent arm to investigate Congressional ethics is meeting strong resistance from some.

Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) have unveiled a major ethics reform bill that will create an independent body to keep tabs on members of Congress.  The Office of Public Integrity will be to the Legislative Branch what the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is to the Executive Branch -- well, sort of.  While the GAO deals more with policy, the Office of Public Integrity would focus squarely on the ethical conduct of Congress.  But like the GAO, the OPI would act as an independent entity.

Until now, Congress has been allowed to investigate itself whenever there were any allegations of wrongdoing.  Judging by the way that the House Ethics Committee gave a blind eye to Tom DeLay's ethical misdeeds, Barack Obama believes it is about time that the bar be set higher for lawmakers.  Still, the Illinois Senator is worried about the resistance that the bill is getting from some members of the Senate:

"A lot of members are concerned about the use of an independentcommission as a political club to beat them over the head," Obama saidat a news conference Monday as debate on ethics legislation opened.

But Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) thinks the Obama-Feingold legislation is not necessary:

"Our ethics process in the Senate works very well," said Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., another ethics committee member.

You will find that members of Congress who oppose the legislation receive a lot of special interest money.  For example, as of 2006, only 68.8% of money given to Mark Pryor came from individual donors.  A whopping one-quarter of all Pryor's money came from PAC's.  34.8% of all that PAC money ($723,484) was thrown his way by large corporations -- most of which oppose ethics reform measures of this kind.  On the flip-side, Barack Obama, who is sponsoring this legislation, received 90.9% of all his contributions from individual donors.  Unlike Pryor, the Illinois Senator is not indebted to special interest groups.

Obama and Feingold already have put together a core group of supporters for this legislation:

• Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
• Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
• Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
• Claire McCaskill (D-MI)
• Joe Lieberman (I-CT)
• John McCain (R-AZ)
• Susan Collins (R-ME)

As you can see, many of the bill's supporters are freshman senators.  But not in all cases.  Both Bob Casey (D-PA) and Jon Tester (D-MT) believe that the existing rules are good enough:

“I would rather see the enforcement done by an existing body,” Tester said. “But there needs to be teeth in enforcement.”

This ethics bill will be offered in addition to the one passed last week by the House, which was the broadest ethics package since the 1970s.

Comments

[Slade]

It is a common mistake that far too many people make. . .Mark Pryor being a senator from Arkansas should read like this. . .Mark Pryor (D-AR). AK is Alaska. . .they don't send many democrats to Washington. Other than that. . .great stuff all around I hope the ethics legislation flies through.

[Administrator: Todd]

Oops, I meant to put AR. My bad. Thanks for pointing that out.