[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 21750]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 REGARDING COMPREHENSIVE ETHICS REFORM

  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, many members of the freshman 
class were elected in part because people were tired of the culture of 
corruption that they saw here in Washington and the total lack of 
accountability for those that broke the law and betrayed the American 
trust. People out in America look at Washington and they just don't 
understand how Members of Congress over the past several years could be 
carted off to Federal prisons while their own body, the Congress of the 
United States, sat by and did virtually nothing to hold these people 
accountable for their actions.
  Today, Congress will pass landmark lobbying reform legislation. Fund-
raising will become more transparent, sunlight will be shed on lobbyist 
influence, the K Street Project will end, and the revolving door for 
Members of Congress will shut a little bit tighter. But as Congress 
reduces the influence of people outside the body of Congress, we also 
need to recommit ourselves to cleaning up our own House by reforming 
the House ethics process. We will all celebrate our victory today. It 
will be a critical step to changing how things work in Washington. But 
we can't stop here. We need to make our ethics process work again by 
establishing a new citizen ethics panel independent of Congress with 
the power to initiate and vet ethics enforcement actions. We need this 
reform not because Members of Congress are corrupt but because they are 
the victims of simple human nature. It isn't natural to turn against 
your colleagues, your coworkers and your confidants to file complaints 
against each other under our current ethics process. Inaction within 
our current system isn't corruption, it's just human instinct. That's 
why responsible ethics reform will allow an independent panel to 
initiate these complaints, guaranteeing that friendships and work 
relationships don't get in the way of enforcing our ethics rules.
  Mr. Speaker, soon after I was elected last November, I went to speak 
at an elementary school in my hometown of Cheshire. At the end of my 
talk, a fifth grader stood up and asked me a question. He said, Mr. 
Murphy, you sound good now, but how do I know that you're not going to 
go down to Washington and become like everybody else?
  I laughed a little bit when he asked me that question, but it's 
frankly a good one. And the danger for all of us is that the longer 
that someone spends here, the more ownership you take over the very 
system that you once ran against. And even though you may know that the 
system is broken, sometimes it just seems far too long a bridge to 
cross in order to fix it. But it has to be fixed. And it may just fall 
upon the newest Members of this body to do the mending. Because it's 
not just happenstance that some of the strongest voices for this reform 
are the freshman class, those who have spent the least amount of time 
working under this dome. Maybe because we just spent the last 2 years 
spending 18 hours a day living and breathing the frustrations of people 
outside the Beltway, even those that aren't old enough to vote, that we 
see with clear eyes what I think everyone inside the Beltway knows in 
their heart--that our current ethics process doesn't work and it feeds 
the perception that politicians spend far too much time and too much 
effort watching their own backs.
  Listen, I know reform isn't easy, especially when it comes to setting 
up the rules by which we enforce our own code of conduct. This is 
delicate stuff. And I understand the fear that some Members have of 
handing over our ethics process to some outside independent body. But 
we need to rise above these fears, not only because we owe it to 
ourselves to remove the built-in conflicts of interest that put Members 
between a rock and a hard place but because the people out there in the 
Fifth District of Connecticut and every other district in America won't 
believe in their Congress again until they know that we can police 
ourselves.
  Reform isn't easy. Not the landmark lobbying bill that we will pass 
today or the needed ethics reforms still to come. But, Mr. Speaker, 
nothing worthwhile ever is.

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