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WASHINGTON — It was supposed to be a triumphant morning for Republicans on Capitol Hill — a
…
WASHINGTON
— It was supposed to be a triumphant morning for Republicans on Capitol
Hill — a moment to demonstrate the merits of unified party rule in the
age of Donald J. Trump. By noon, party leaders had a message for their charges: It was not going smoothly.
The day after House Republicans voted to eliminate an independent ethics body,
members returned to work on Tuesday to find their offices inundated
with angry missives from constituents amid a national uproar.
By
midmorning, Mr. Trump had weighed in, questioning the members’
priorities on Twitter. Shortly after, lawmakers were summoned to the
basement of the Capitol for a hastily convened meeting with Republican
leaders.
Representative
Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader — who, along with
Speaker Paul D. Ryan, had opposed the proposal — lobbed a pointed
question at his fellow Republicans, according to two people present: Had
they campaigned on repealing the Affordable Care Act, or tinkering with
an ethics office? Minutes later, members emerged to say the changes had
been scrapped.
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The
reversal came less than 24 hours after House Republicans, meeting in a
secret session, voted to curtail the powers of the Office of
Congressional Ethics, an independent body created in 2008 after a series
of scandals involving House lawmakers, including three who were sent to
jail. It was part of a turbulent opening for the Trump era in
Washington, marked by a Republican push in the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
House
Republicans, led by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, had
sought on Monday to prevent the office from pursuing investigations
that might result in criminal charges. Instead, they wanted to allow
lawmakers on the more powerful House Ethics Committee to shut down
inquiries. They even sought to block the small staff at the Office of
Congressional Ethics, which would have been renamed and put under the
oversight of House lawmakers, from speaking to the news media.
“It
has damaged or destroyed a lot of political careers in this place, and
it’s cost members of Congress millions of dollars to defend themselves
against anonymous allegations,” Representative Steve King, Republican of
Iowa, said Tuesday, still defending the move.
But
such resolve crumbled Tuesday morning, as thousands of phone calls
flooded lawmakers’ offices and both conservative and liberal ethics
groups issued statements condemning the vote. Some Republicans joined
in, saying the measure sent the wrong message to the public. (Internet
searches for the words “Who is my representative” surged after news of
the plan broke Monday night and peaked Tuesday morning, according to Google.)
“It
was a stumble,” said Representative Mark Sanford, Republican of South
Carolina, who opposed the measure and who was himself the subject of an
ethics investigation while he was governor of South Carolina. “Probably
not the way you want to start out.”
Mr.
Trump had weighed in via a series of Twitter posts, suggesting that the
House should be focused on domestic policy priorities such as health
care and a tax overhaul. He called the Office of Congressional Ethics
“unfair” but said focusing on it now was a case of misplaced priorities.
He appended the hashtag “DTS,” an apparent allusion to his promise to
“drain the swamp” in Washington.
Mr.
Ryan and Mr. McCarthy had made clear on Monday that they, too, were
opposed to the change. But amid boxes of pizza at a House office
building, with the Rose Bowl playing on a nearby television, several
members voiced support for the maneuver, including Representative Steve
Pearce of New Mexico, whose office employed an aide who was ensnared in an ethics inquiry but later cleared.
At
first, on Tuesday morning, Mr. Ryan and Mr. McCarthy played down the
changes. Mr. McCarthy suggested that he and Mr. Ryan did not have the
power to simply order other Republicans to take their advice.
“Welcome back,” he joked, referring to the start of the new session of Congress on Tuesday. Even at home, he said, “I usually don’t win what we watch on TV.”
About
an hour later, before new members of Congress were to be sworn in — the
point when the House adopts new rules that will govern how it conducts
itself during the two-year session — Mr. McCarthy told his fellow
Republicans that they needed to reverse themselves quickly, or
potentially face an even more embarrassing revolt on the House floor. By
his estimation, he told them, the provision was going to be removed one
way or another.
This
was not the first time that House lawmakers — Democrats or Republicans —
had tried to curtail the powers or budget of the Office of
Congressional Ethics, which some lawmakers see as being too aggressive
in its investigations, even though it is routinely cheered by nonprofit
ethics groups on both the left and the right.
Perhaps
most prominently, in 2011, Representative Melvin Watt, a North Carolina
Democrat who later left Congress to join the Obama administration,
tried to cut the agency’s budget by 40 percent, a proposal that failed on a 302-102 vote.
The
House Ethics Committee, the only body that has the power to actually
punish lawmakers, also frequently clashed with the office, which serves
more as a grand jury that investigates allegations and issues findings
to the Ethics Committee of probable cause of misdeeds.
For
example, the committee tried in 2015 to force the Office of
Congressional Ethics to shut down its investigation into allegations
that nine House lawmakers’ trips to Azerbaijan in 2013 had been
improperly paid for, in part, by a foreign government entity. Some of
the lawmakers also accepted improper gifts during the trips, including
rugs and crystal. The Office of Congressional Ethics refused to shut
down its inquiry, and it published its findings on its own after the Ethics Committee voted to clear the lawmakers of wrongdoing (although the committee urged them to return the gifts).
House
rules require the Ethics Committee to act on recommendations by the
Office of Congressional Ethics within 90 days, with the expectation that
it will either formally clear the targeted lawmakers or create
investigative committees to determine if rules or laws have been
violated. But in recent years, the committee has increasingly relied on a
loophole that allows it to informally continue to review allegations
without closing a case, a step it has taken in 21 of the 68 cases
referred since 2009.
Most
frequently, that means an end to the matter, at least as far as the
public is aware, even though the Ethics Committee never formally
announces that it has closed the investigation. As of this week, cases
in such a limbo include allegations against Representatives Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina; Roger Williams, Republican of Texas; Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma; Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington; Bobby L. Rush, Democrat of Illinois; and Luis V. Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois.
After
their reversal on Tuesday, House Republicans agreed to ask the Ethics
Committee to examine the Office of Congressional Ethics and recommend
possible changes by this summer to address the concerns that some
members have raised.
Mr.
Goodlatte, who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, defended
his proposal and called the reporting about it inaccurate.
“Gross
misrepresentation by opponents of my amendment, and the media willing
to go along with this agenda, resulted in a flurry of misconceptions and
unfounded claims about the true purpose of this amendment,” he said in a
statement.
But Mr. Goodlatte’s critics said he had simply been caught trying to sneak through a favor to help protect his fellow lawmakers.
“We’re
glad that the House Republicans listened to the public outrage about
this proposal and came to their senses to reverse it, and not end real
ethics enforcement in Congress,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of
the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington, said.
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