Crucial Test For Ethics Reform

Unfortunately, the task force headed by Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., is already under fire for failing to genuinely strengthen the House's moribund ethics panel, officially the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

By all accounts, Capuano's task force plans to recommend setting up an independent investigative body that will have the power to conduct preliminary investigations. Reform advocates both on and off Capitol Hill have long called for outsiders to be brought into the ethics process through some form of independent agency.

The problem with the task force plan is that it fails to give these outside ethics investigators any form of subpoena power. That means that little will actually change in how the ethics panel operates, critics say. The task force, which has been laboring for months and has repeatedly delayed taking action, is now expected to release its recommendations sometime in December.

"The problem has always been lack of enforcement, and that hasn't changed," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

"If there were indeed an independent office that could conduct serious investigations, that would fundamentally alter the ethics process," concurred Craig Holman, legislative representative for Public Citizen. Instead, said Holman, the task force is "really hamstringing this office so it can't conduct any serious investigations."

Capuano is sanguine about such criticisms. "There's nothing in the world that will ever satisfy everybody, and that was not my intent," he said. "My intent was to improve the process in Congress." Capuano declined to go into detail about what the task force will ultimately recommend, but confirmed that it will, indeed, include some form of outside investigative body.

"It's a significant step forward," he said of the plan under consideration. Another key element of the plan, Capuano said, will be to bring more transparency to ethics deliberations, which are now shrouded in the strictest secrecy and confidentiality.

"None of us knows whether the ethics process works, because it is not transparent," he said. "That has always been my biggest concern."

Whatever the task force ultimately recommends, it's unlikely that the debate over ethics enforcement will end there. Reform advocates argue that the sweeping ethics and lobbying law enacted earlier this year will mean little if it is never enforced. If the ethics task force's recommendations prove too tepid, as many now predict, Public Citizen and its allies plan to approach House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democratic leaders to lobby for more-sweeping changes.

"We will appeal to them to develop a little more vibrant package when the House actually considers these options," said Holman.

The debate over the ethics panel isn't the only area where pro-reform activists are lobbying to ensure that the new law, officially the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, is fully carried out. A coalition of reform groups recently wrote to the House Clerk and the Secretary of the Senate to urge them to fully implement the new law's disclosure requirements.

These include new rules that require lobbyists to disclose the financial benefits and favors that they provide to members of Congress, as well as disclosure of events that honor or recognize certain elected or federal officials and disclosure requirements for so-called stealth coalitions.

Also at issue is the Federal Election Commission's implementation of the new law's bundling provisions, which will require lawmakers to report the contributions that lobbyists round up on their behalf. The FEC has received public comments on its bundling regulations, and is expected to take public action in the coming weeks.

As the new law continues to take effect, and as lobbyists and lawmakers adjust to living under the new rules, these questions of implementation and enforcement will be crucial.

"So far there have been great accomplishments in the ethics rules and lobbying laws that were enacted," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. "But in order for them to accomplish their goals, they have to be properly interpreted, implemented and enforced. So we're now at a critical stage here."

Indeed, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act will be nothing but a piece of paper if it is never actually carried out. As Holman put it: "I learned long ago that passage of legislation is just half the battle."