Victor Fazio: “I did not serve here during the Watergate era. But in the 20 years I have been here, I have been greatly involved in…”

“I did not serve here during the Watergate era. But in the 20 years I have been here, I have been greatly involved in ethics issues, serving on the Committee on Ethics for 8 years and leading on perhaps the most important bill of my career, the Ethics Reform Act of 1989. I can only reflect on those years as an era in which partisanship increased exponentially, the bitterness that has occurred here, the take-no-prisoners mentality that has infected this place. Within the last week, two of our colleagues in the majority have been dragged into this, unfortunately to their detriment; their private lives spread before the public. If we are going to succeed in the task that the Founding Fathers have given us, we are going to have to overcome this tendency, this propensity to make partisanship our watchword here; we are going to have to reverse this trend. We have had the debate between openness and the rights of the individual. It is an age-old one. And we have come down on the side of openness, because I think we believe, frankly, that the process will not work any other way. We are not where we were with President Nixon 25 years ago. The Washington Post, NBC, are telling us this morning what is in this report. With all due respect to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), and great respect is due, it is not the committee we fear. The information is in the public domain, and frankly, the public believes they know everything there is to know about this already.”