On the recordJune 10, 2016
Madam Chair, the Office of Congressional Ethics is crucial to ensuring accountability and transparency in this body. Any attempts to cut its budget would only serve to erode our constituents' trust and faith in Congress, which certainly has already suffered a significant amount of erosion. As many of my colleagues will recall, the House created the Office of Congressional Ethics nearly a decade ago to improve the integrity of the ethics process in the House. The House was recovering from the Mark Foley scandal, and it was clear that we needed to do something to rebuild the American people's trust in their elected Representatives. That is why OCE's core ``mission is to assist the U.S. House in upholding high ethical standards with an eye toward increasing transparency and providing information to the public.'' I acknowledge that there are proposals to improve the operations of the Office of Congressional Ethics, and we should certainly take a look at those, Madam Chair, but it is common sense that these improvements can't be made by cutting funding for the office that we are actually seeking to improve. Moreover, the issue of congressional ethics is far too important to reduce to a 10-minute debate on the House floor. For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose this misguided amendment. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
