John Ensign: “let me make it clear. I support the electronic filing by Senators in the underlying bill that Senator Feinstein brought…”

“let me make it clear. I support the electronic filing by Senators in the underlying bill that Senator Feinstein brought forward. There is an issue I want to raise on an amendment I wish to add to the bill. We have a problem going on in the Senate where there are anonymous outside groups who are filing ethics complaints, and they are doing it for purely political reasons. As often is the case, this can be fixed with transparency. If someone files an ethics complaint against a Senator from the outside, then they would have to disclose their donors under my amendment. Right now in the Senate, there is no such requirement for filing a complaint. The complaints do not have to be sworn, signed, or even identified, and they can be submitted by a person or an unnamed group no one will ever know. The complaints do not have to be submitted in a formal manner. They can be on a beverage napkin or written in crayon. However, this is not the case in the other Chamber. In the House of Representatives, they have very formal, rigorous requirements to file complaints. The complaints must be sworn to and filed by a Member of Congress. With no requirements in the Senate, the result is that people create shell organizations in order to register purely political complaints. Some say my amendment will prevent people from filing complaints. This is simply not true. My amendment will make the complaint process transparent and similar to the FEC process.”