[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 21752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ETHICS REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2007, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) is recognized 
during morning-hour debate for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, when I was campaigning last year for this seat 
in Congress, we talked about a lot of issues. We talked about Iraq. We 
talked about global warming. But we also talked about a very important 
issue on ethics. Ethics in Congress. It is disappointing to me that 
people in Indiana and around the country don't have a lot of respect 
for Members of Congress. I think our approval rating right now is at 23 
percent. And one of the reasons why the approval rate is at 23 percent 
is because we're not doing a very good job in Congress in investigating 
the wrongdoings of a few Members.
  And I want to emphasize it's just a few Members. Because most Members 
in this August body are honorable people. But there are a few that are 
spoiling the basket. We need to do a better job of policing the 
Congress of the United States. And so one of the things that I have 
done and one of the campaign promises that I want to keep that I made 
during the campaign last year is making sure that we clean up our act 
in Congress. One of the ways that we do that is changing the way we 
govern ourselves here in Congress. Right now in Congress, the Ethics 
Committee has a hard time with investigating Members of Congress 
because they are our colleagues. It's kind of like investigating 
members of your own family. It's hard to do. It's just natural that 
Members of Congress are reluctant to investigate the wrongdoings of 
their own Members. And so I think we need a change. We need to have an 
independent body of members who are investigating the minor wrongdoings 
of Members of Congress. And so I propose and have introduced 
legislation that would set up a new committee of Congress, of former 
Members of Congress who know this institution, who respect this 
institution, who will do the investigations that need to be done about 
a few Members of Congress who are misbehaving.
  This new body would have subpoena powers. They would have all the 
powers that the present Ethics Committee has to them now, but they 
would be independent. And that's what we need. We need an independent 
committee that would investigate the wrongdoings of a few Members of 
Congress. We need to make this bipartisan. We need to restore the 
respect and honor of this Congress. A 23 percent approval rating is not 
acceptable and we need to do a better job. I believe that having former 
Members of Congress on a committee to investigate the wrongdoings of a 
few, and I emphasize a few Members of Congress, is the way to go. We 
need to make progress on this. We need to do this. We're going into the 
August recess. I hope that when we come back after the August recess 
that we will actually implement and pass into law an independent body 
of former Members of Congress to investigate those people who are doing 
what they should not be doing and that we can get about the business of 
restoring the integrity of Congress. I think it's very important.
  I've been in politics for 20 years. It's an honor for me to serve in 
this body, and to think that only 23 percent of the people have faith 
and confidence in the Congress is not acceptable. I believe that 
setting up an independent committee of former Members of Congress can 
help at least restore some of the integrity that we have lost in 
Congress.

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