The Hill News

In January 2011, the new Republican majority will have to decide whether the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the independent ethics watchdog that was established in 2008 at the urging of the Democratic leadership, will continue to exist. Many from both sides of the aisle have called for its elimination. Rather than doing that, however, perhaps all the OCE needs is some remodeling.

While there were several reasons that were cited as the basis for the establishment of a parallel, if not competing, entity devoted to the enforcement of ethics among House members, the foremost among them seemed to be the fact that there was a belief that Congress’s own Ethics Committee was not up to the task of policing its own. The Ethics Committee, comprised only of sitting members of Congress, was believed to lack the objectivity needed to ferret out corruption and rule breakers from among its colleagues. As a result, many editorial boards and interest groups demanded there be outsiders involved in the process. Thus, the OCE was born.

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