CLC Report Details Gap in Ethics Enforcement Between House and Senate

This analysis details gaps in enforcement between the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. In the House, the nonpartisan and independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) routinely conducts investigations of alleged unethical conduct and exposes evidence of lawmakers’ misdeeds to the public. But the OCE only has jurisdiction in the House. In the Senate, the only destination for an ethics complaint is the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, a secretive body composed of senators who are tasked with investigating their colleagues. This ineffective system of self-policing has created an environment in which published ethics investigations are extremely rare and enforcement is practically nonexistent.