On the recordMarch 6, 2019
I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I thank her for this amendment which is, as she says, a very commonsense amendment. I don't really understand what the objection would be. If you don't apply the same ethical standards to unpaid staff or people who are working in the executive branch as you do to paid, what you are left with is a gigantic loophole that could be taken advantage of, and I don't think that the average person out there could understand why you would make that kind of distinction. So this is a very logical thing to do. Just because you are not paid doesn't mean you might not have a conflict of interest. So this is an amendment that simply directs the Office of Government Ethics to come up with some rules to make sure that senior administration officials, special governmental employees who draw no salary, are still going to abide by the ethics laws. Again, if the job here of all of us is to meet the expectations of the public in terms of how things should function up here in Washington, abiding ethical standards and observing conflicts of interest rules, then this meets that expectation directly. I think it is a good amendment.
