Senate Votes Down Outside Ethics Office

Senate Votes Down Outside Ethics Office

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 29, 2006; Page A03

The Senate rejected a proposal to establish an independent office to investigate ethics complaints against its members, and then cleared the way to pass a broad-based ethics and lobbying bill this week.

On a 67 to 30 vote, the Senate defeated a bipartisan proposal to create an office of public integrity, which its backers said was designed to strengthen enforcement of Senate rules and bolster voters' trust in Congress in the aftermath of the guilty plea in January of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had killed a similar proposal March 2 after current and former members of the Senate's ethics committee called the office superfluous. The top Republican and the senior Democrat on the ethics panel led the successful effort to bury the proposal yesterday for a second time.

The rejected measure was devised by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). They asserted that lobbying and ethics rules need to be better enforced for the public to regain trust in congressional officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801586.html