Collins Amendment Fails to Make It Into Senate Reform Bill
WASHINGTON, March 29-Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said that the lobbying reform bill that the Senate passed Wednesday by a vote of 90-8 was the most significant reform of ethics rules in a decade, but she added that the bill would have been stronger had her amendment to create an independent office to investigate ethics complaints passed on Tuesday.
The amendment to create an Office of Public Integrity, proposed by Collins and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), failed, 30 to 67.
“I’m disappointed,” Collins said at a press conference following the Wednesday vote. “I still think an Office of Public Integrity is a good idea, and it would have strengthened the enforcement leg of this bill and complemented the increase of penalties.”
She said her amendment failed because “members were very uneasy at having an independent entity do investigations of allegations of wrongdoing.”
Collins added that it often takes years for organizational reforms to go through.
The proposed office would have had an independent director who could conduct investigations and refer them to the Senate Ethics Committee. The proposal would have allowed investigations to be launched by a member, an outside party or the office itself. But the amendment would have allowed the Ethics Committee to overrule the office by a two-thirds vote.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R- Maine, who voted for the Collins amendment on Tuesday, said in a statement that while the Ethics Committee was doing its job, recent scandals have eroded the public’s trust in Congress.
“I believe the creation of an independent Office of Public Integrity will alleviate the genuine concern the American people have about the ability of Congress to address possible ethics violations, and I am disappointed that the Senate rejected this amendment today,” Snowe said.
Common Cause, a nonpartisan lobbying group promoting open government, supported the amendment, said Mike Surrusco, the director of ethics campaigns for the organization. But Surrusco said the amendment did not go as far as he would have liked and that Common Cause had favored an amendment by Obama that would have established a more independent office, incapable of being overruled by the Senate committee.
“People don’t want this independent office because then they can’t control it,” Surrusco said.
“We feel like the whole process of investigating their colleagues for members is just inherently conflicted,” he said.
Paul Miller, the president of the American League of Lobbyists, disagreed. He said the fact that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who sparked the recent ethics debate, was caught was proof that the old system was working.
“These folks can police themselves and their colleagues, and I think they’re in a position to do so,” Miller said of members of Congress. “I know you hear the stories that, well, one side won’t issue a complaint because there is an agreement that both sides have that they’re not going to do that. I think this is a new era that we’re entering into and I think you’re going to see that change.”
Surrusco said that the House and Senate Ethics Committees had been emasculated over the last 10 years. While the House committee has taken two complaints in the last decade, Surrusco said, the Senate committee has done more. Common Cause has filed several complaints, he said, but had not heard back on any of them.
Miller said that the ethics committees had not started looking into ethics complaints against Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Tom DeLay (R-Texas) because the Justice Department was already investigating them and “they did not want to reinvent the wheel.” Miller said an improved electronic filing system for lobbyists would help the current situation.
###
