Mike Levin: “I strongly oppose the changes in the House ethics rules that the Republican majority is seeking to adopt today. The…”

“I strongly oppose the changes in the House ethics rules that the Republican majority is seeking to adopt today. The proposed Republican rule changes would cripple the ethics process in the House and dramatically lower the bar for standards of official conduct. Late yesterday, the Republican majority in the House released the details of its rules package for the 109th Congress. Some of the newspapers reported this morning that the majority had abandoned its efforts to loosen rules governing Members' ethical conduct, but this is not the case. While the majority backed away from some of its rule changes, the most egregious ethics change remains. This provision would make it much more difficult for the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by Members of the House. Under current rules, if the Ethics Committee deadlocks on whether or not to pursue an ethics complaint against a Member of the House, the matter automatically goes to an investigative subcommittee. Under the proposed change, a complaint against a Member would be tabled unless a majority votes to take action on it within 45 days. Since the committee is evenly split with five Republicans and five Democrats, either political party could simply block an ethics complaint by stonewalling and running out the clock.”