The U.S. House of Representatives created a new House ethics system in early 2008 — adding the quasi-independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) — to the existing House Ethics Committee as part of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to “drain the swamp” of Capitol Hill corruption.
But the results of that effort have been somewhat shy of that mark. Suffice to say that the swamp remains intact.
One matter that finally drew the attention of the House Ethics Committee was travel by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Bolton, and four other Democratic congressmen to attend conferences in the tropical island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.
The House Ethics Committee released a report Friday clearing Thompson and four other members of the Congressional Black Caucus who were accused of taking corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008 of intentional wrongdoing. The ethics panel did, however, say the representatives would have to pay the costs.
The committee probe ruled that the traveling House members relied on false information from the named official sponsors of the trips, the Carib News, a New York newspaper, and the Carib News Foundation.
But last week, I interviewed Peter Flaherty of the National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group, who actually attended the 2008 conference in St. Maarten and subsequently filed the ethics complaint led to the probe of Thompson’s travels.
Flaherty said that it would “have been impossible” for congressmen attending the conference not to know about its corporate sponsors. Flaherty documented signage, posters, banners and other promotional materials visible inside the meeting rooms at the event.
He submitted 18 photographs and other documentation to the House Ethics Committee documenting that Citigroup, Pfizer, American Airlines, AT&T;, Verizon, Macy’s, and IBM were corporate sponsors promoting their businesses at the event.
And while Flaherty scoffed at the claims of congressmen who said they were unaware of the corporate sponsorship of the Caribbean junket, he was quick to point out that Democrats don’t have the market cornered on such behavior.
“Regardless which party is in power, Congress has refused to enforce even the lax ethics rules they have and that’s been under Democratic and Republican leadership,” said Flaherty. While the NLPC is a conservative group, they’ve gone after high-profile Republicans like former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski over ethics allegations.
Flaherty makes a good point.
Both parties wink and nudge over the meager ethics rules adopted by Congress and the excuses offered by offending members and readily accepted by their peers at the Capitol are not excuses that the Internal Revenue Service would accept from the average taxpayer for such lapses.
Officially, Thompson did nothing wrong — but he’s still being required to repay the costs of the Caribbean travel. Republican congressmen have received the same treatment under GOP control of Congress.
The saddest thing for taxpayers is that the bar for congressional ethics isn’t set very high — and won’t be — regardless which party’s in charge.
Contact Perspective Editor Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at clarionledger.com. His talk radio show, On Deadline with Sid Salter, is broadcast on the SuperTalk Mississippi network.
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