Epic flip-flop: House GOP decides not to gut ethics panel
Looks like the overambitious Rep. Bob Goodlatte miscalculated bigly…
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Following a public outcry, and tweeted criticism from President-elect Donald Trump, House Republicans reversed course Tuesday on a proposal to gut their own ethics watchdog.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called an emergency House GOP conference Tuesday around noon to scrap a proposed House rule that would have effectively declawed the Office of Congressional Ethics. The proposal, which House Republicans approved behind closed doors Monday night, would have defied Trump’s “drain the swamp” mantra aimed at making Washington more transparent and less cozy.
But McCarthy’s motion to restore the current OCE set-up was adopted by unanimous consent after Trump himself got involved — an intervention that irritated a number of House Republicans who supported the move to neuter the ethics office.
“We shot ourselves in the foot,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who said the ethics snafu was an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. “Sometimes people have to learn the hard way.”
Shot themselves in the foot? No, it’s more like they tried to pull a fast one on a dumbed-down base that has the attention span of Donald Trump – oh, look! Something shiny!!
Members spilling out of HC-5. Say the OCE change is dead for now but not forever. Many want to return to this issue soon…
— Robert Costa (@costareports) January 3, 2017
Mark Robert Costa’s words. They’ll have to wait for something big before they can prevent the swamp from being drained.
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