Mike Thompson: “I refer to the position of the Office of Government Ethics on this. They have considered this matter and wrote to the…”

“I refer to the position of the Office of Government Ethics on this. They have considered this matter and wrote to the minority leader. One provision of the bill provides for waivers of applicable conflict of interest laws for one member of that board. I am quoting now: We believe that this provision is antithetical to sound Government ethics policy and thus to sound Government. Such across-the-board statutory waivers for someone other than a mere advisor is unprecedented and, we believe, inadvisable. So the comparisons to Mr. Rossotti, who formerly had a position in the private sector, are inapplicable. As far as this body is concerned, we spent a great deal of time answering to perceived conflict of interest situations. I doubt if we would ever be in a situation of exempting ourselves from any of those considerations here. So this is a very narrowly tailored provision. I understand the sentiment of having some input, having as broad an input as possible. Hopefully, there would be a way to have that kind of input from the employees on perhaps a less formal basis. But there is an overriding issue here, Mr. President. I don't think we can willy-nilly say that any time we want to make an exception to the ethics rules because we want to get the thing done. We can say that in almost every situation.…”