We don’t yet know exactly how many lawmakers will be caught up in the Abramoff scandal; it could be six, or it could be 60. Surely, all of these transgressions will keep the House Ethics Committee remarkably busy over the next year, right? Wrong.
The leaders of Congress’ ethics committees are not committing to any investigation of misconduct despite the growing revelations about the favors that lobbyist Jack Abramoff won for clients and the largesse he arranged for lawmakers.
The committees, for now, are poised to remain on the sidelines.
The House committee, stymied by partisan disagreements, launched no investigations in 2005 even after former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, requested an inquiry into his foreign travel arranged by Abramoff.
The lack of commitment to investigate issues about lawmakers’ conduct with Abramoff, his lobbying team and his clients is raising anew the question of whether Congress adequately can discipline its own.
“There have always been questions about whether Congress can police itself,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in ethics. “The situation in the House removes all doubt. The House is not policing itself.”
These guys aren’t even trying. Judy Nadler, a senior fellow at Santa Clara University, said, “You have to publicly reprimand someone. If there are no consequences, things will not change. This is drive-by ethics.”
It’s enough to make me wonder why Congress even has an ethics committee. There’s no will to investigate, punish, or deter wrongdoing. The process began to deteriorate after Dems and Republicans reached an “ethics truce” several years ago, but the apparent nail in the coffin was Tom DeLay’s putsch against then-Ethics Committee Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), who had the audacity to support half-way vigorous enforcement of congressional ethics rules. The process has been a joke ever since.