The Hill News

There is good news and bad news today in the House's vote to defeat the amendment offered by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) to gut the funding of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The good news is that it went down to defeat with 302 Members voting against it. The bad news is that there are at least 102 Members who are totally clueless about public perception and apparently about the facts of what has been occurring in the House ethics process.

Just this week, an outside counsel was appointed to take over the investigation of alleged violations of House ethics rules by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) as well as investigate the allegations of leaks, professional misconduct and partisan meltdown in the House Ethics Committee itself. None of these alleged malfunctions have anything to do with the OCE, which, in contrast, has been conducting itself to date with a rare degree of professionalism and bipartisan agreement. Indeed, it appears that it is the OCE's professionali! sm that has so irritated some members, particularly those who have been the subject of an OCE investigation.

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