Members of Congress are elected to serve their constituents’ interests. Yet leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives is attempting to effectively shut down the only independent office that can investigate misconduct by members of Congress: the Office of Congressional Conduct (formerly the Office of Congressional Ethics).
The Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC) serves an essential role in our democracy by providing independent, nonpartisan oversight of the House of Representatives, safeguarding it against corruption, and providing much-needed transparency by publishing reports about their investigations upon completion.
Ethics laws and enforcement provide the accountability and transparency necessary to ensure that members of Congress are serving the people rather than lining their own pockets. Shutting down the OCC will only invite and allow more corruption in Congress.
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and 19 partners sent a letter to the full House of Representatives, calling on members to urge leadership to approve the OCC board. By failing to do so, House leadership has stymied the OCC’s ability to operate.
By preventing the OCC from fulfilling its mission of reviewing allegations of misconduct in a nonpartisan fashion, leadership is harming both members of Congress and the public.
In its 15 years of existence, the OCC has established its valuable contribution to ethics enforcement and transparency.
The OCC provides members with a neutral fact-finding process to establish whether allegations of misconduct are substantiated or not. The office has no political agenda, having investigated Democrats and Republicans at almost the exact same rate, finding evidence of misconduct in about 50% of investigations.
When the OCC completes an investigation, they often publish their report, providing the public with much-needed transparency about their elected officials and fulfilling the public’s right to know that allegations of unethical, corrupt or illegal acts are being investigated.
Both voters and members of Congress have shown on multiple occasions that they want the OCC to exist and operate effectively.
Voters have done so by squashing past attempts to eliminate or weaken the OCC by expressing their disapproval of any efforts to undermine the OCC’s work. And, on their end, a majority of representatives have expressed their support for the OCC by voting to reauthorize it in every Congress since 2008, including just this past January.
The House must act to stop leadership from hindering one of the only safeguards against corruption in Congress and the only independent ethics enforcement body in either chamber.
To learn more about all the work CLC is doing to promote a more ethical government for the American people, visit the Ethics section of our website.