Committee Funding Resolution

COMMITTEE FUNDING RESOLUTION -- (House of Representatives - March 08, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOEHNER. I appreciate the gentlelady yielding.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the gentlelady from Ohio, knows I have deep respect for her and the other members of the Ethics Committee and Mr. Hastings. They do a good job on behalf of our Members, and it is thankful from the Members, but it is a very unwelcome job that you have; and we do appreciate your work.

With what the House did in early January, in terms of adopting a new ethics package, it is clear that the responsibility of the Ethics Committee has expanded significantly. Members supported that, and I think it is long overdue.

Now, we all know, and I am not going to talk about the amendment that was offered last night, but there is insufficient money in the budget for the Ethics Committee to do what we have charged them with doing.

Now, we do this with Federal agencies all the time and can look the other way. If we want Members to abide by the rules that we have adopted, we have to have an Ethics Committee that can provide services to those Members so they understand the rules, they understand the limits, what they can and can't do. The concern that we have is that because there is insufficient money for the Ethics Committee in this resolution that Members are going to be charged with living under new rules and not having the service component necessary from the Ethics Committee to carry out our job.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov