Incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) could be headed toward a conflict with his home-state Tea Party over the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). Outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed through legislation creating the OCE as a new independent layer of ethics scrutiny in 2008, strong-arming many in her party who feared giving an outside body the power to police members’ activities.
All Republican leaders, including Boehner, vigorously opposed the OCE’s creation and tried to defeat the measure in a series of parliamentary tactics Democrats beat back in March of 2008. The bill passed 207-206 after Democratic leaders pressed several reluctant members to vote in favor.
Anticipating its closure, the office's staff director and chief counsel, Leo Wise, has announced that he is leaving for a job with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.
Asked about the OCE, Brendan Buck, spokesman for the majority transition office, said that Boehner will "take a look at current ethics rules" but that ethics "has really not been the focus of our transition efforts." GOP leaders probably won't vote publicly to kill the OCE but will simply quietly defund it next year, said John Wonderlich, policy director of the Sunlight Foundation.
Boehner "has clearly got a big problem on his hands," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "He’s an establishment, country-club Republican trying to embrace the tea party folks without making any of the changes they require."
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