Zoe Lofgren: “I must oppose the gentleman's amendment. It strips the subpoena power from the Director of the Office of Government…”

“I must oppose the gentleman's amendment. It strips the subpoena power from the Director of the Office of Government Ethics. Recent years have made it clear that the OGE needs to be strengthened. The subpoena power is a key enforcement tool, and a necessary one, for the Office of Government Ethics. The former head of OGE said, in working with the current administration it has become clear we need to strengthen the ethics program. That individual resigned as head of the agency in July of last year, after almost 5 years as its head. The OGE was set up in the aftermath of the 1970 Watergate scandal to clean up government. Some of that cleanup has relied on norms of behavior that are no longer in effect. We need to make sure that we have the ability with the OGE head to actually obtain information so they can do their job. {time} 1245 I do want to touch on a few other points raised by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Hice). You know, there has been a lot of discussion over and over that the small donor program is funded by taxpayers. That is incorrect. You can just read the bill and see that is incorrect. The freedom from influence fund is entirely funded by a nominal, additional assessment on criminal tax fraud cases, at the upper end, and corporate malfeasance fines and forfeitures. That is the entire source of funding. If there is not enough funding from those sources to fully fund the program, then the program is not fully funded.…”