INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

C-SPAN’S “NEWSMAKERS”

Guest: Rep. Michael Capuano D-MA

Chairman, House Special Task Force on Ethics Enforcement

Reporters: Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post & Jennifer Yachnin, Roll Call

Moderator: C-SPAN

TAPE DATE: Thursday, December 20, 2007

AIR DATE/TIME: SUNDAY, December 23, 2007 at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET

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PETER SLEN, HOST, C-SPAN’S “NEWSMAKERS”: Well, the House Task Force on Ethics Enforcement has come up with a list of recommendations for an independent ethics review office in the House.

Representative Michael Capuano, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was appointed by Speaker Pelosi as the chairman of the Task Force on Ethics Enforcement.

Congressman Capuano, thanks for being with us on “Newsmakers.”

REP. MICHAEL CAPUANO, D-MASSACHUSETTS, CHAIRMAN, HOUSE SPECIAL TASK FORCE ON ETHICS ENFORCEMENT: Happy to be here.

SLEN: Here to question him, Elizabeth Williamson of the “Washington Post,” and Jennifer Yachnin of “Roll Call” newspaper.

And congressman, if you could very quickly tell us what the House Task Force on Ethics Enforcement is, and what your recommendations for an independent ethics review board were.

CAPUANO: It was a special task force put together by the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the minority leader, John Boehner, made up of four Democrats and four Republicans, to look at pretty much just one issue: whether we should have any sort of independent aspect to our ethics process, and if so, what that aspect should be.

We took quite a while to look at it. We came up with outlines of a proposal back in June, I think it was – June or July. We got a fair amount of feedback on that. We went back to the drawing boards and rewrote it.

And the proposal we’ve come up with provides, number one, some independence. People that are appointed are not members of the House to review some of these matters.

Number two, more importantly in my opinion, is the requirement of transparency on most of the matters that come before the Ethics Committee, and some credibility that the old boy network will be dead.

That’s it in a very brief nutshell.

SLEN: Congressman, what do you mean by transparency?

CAPUANO: Transparency in that people will know what’s going on in the Ethics Committee. Right now, even I, as a member of the House, I don’t know whether the Ethics Committee is looking at a case or not looking at a case. You have to guess.

There are probably at the moment 10 or 12 widely reported allegations against individual members. That’s not saying whether they’re right or they’re wrong, or they’re accurate or they’re false. But there are widely reported allegations.

And as a member of the House, I cannot go to my constituents and say, rest assured, the Ethics Committee is looking at this matter and the process will work.

I believe that’s a problem. And I think that the transparency – not necessarily the fact that the result is going to be agreed to by everybody, but the fact that people will be able to know, yes, the process is working, and the matter is being reviewed by appropriate people.

SLEN: How – if this ethics task force recommendation is implemented – how does that become transparent then? How as a member of the House can you discover what’s going on?

CAPUANO: There’ll certain timeframes. Once a matter is initiated and it’s moved forward, there will be certain timeframes after which – or within which, depending on how quickly they want to act – there has to be certain public commentary made.

Again, we’re not trying to presume an answer, but there have to be public pronouncements made that this matter was taken up, and this was the commentary from the newly created board. That’s the main way.

SLEN: Jennifer Yachnin of “Roll Call.”

JENNIFER YACHNIN, STAFF WRITER, “ROLL CALL”: In the bill that you introduced yesterday, there’s no avenue for public submissions of any kind, recommendations for investigations.

Wouldn’t that have put more pressure on the office you’re recommending to make those investigations? And why did you leave that out in the end?

CAPUANO: We had that proposal in the proposal we floated in June. And in response to that, we also didn’t want to – it’s easy to say when you have an organization like Common Cause – we all know Common Cause, we know they’re a legitimate organization – it’s easy to say we’ll let them file. That’s really not the problem.

The problem is, some of the problems we ran into in the last presidential election, such as groups that have formed for the mere purpose of smearing a political person. The Swiftboaters are the classic example, but they’re not the only ones.

And the argument was, if you’re going to allow open filings, well then, you really have to know who’s filing against you, so that you can legitimately know whether it’s a fair complaint or it’s a politically motivated complaint.

So, when we put that proposal in, we also put a proposal in – or part of the proposal was – to have anyone filing, any entity filing, disclose their financial supporters. And that – those two provisions together were met with a fair amount of resistance by pretty much everybody.

YACHNIN: But is that enough to have this new ethics office not have a truce, like what happened in the House, where members of neither party were filing complaints for years?

CAPUANO: It’s hard to tell. I mean, I think the answer is yes. I mean, it’s just like anything else. It’s when you have a federal judiciary, it’s who do you appoint to the bench? Are those people independent? Can they be trusted?

And I think that the process is set up so that these people will be independent. In theory, they should be able to be trusted. Certainly, it’s going to take a little while to make sure that those people are indeed worthy of that trust, which I believe they will be.

ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON, STAFF WRITER, “WASHINGTON POST”: Congressman, when you first began this process, I think it was about a year ago, you had about 10 or 12 watchdog groups, good government types, monitoring the process and participating in it.

When you made the announcement yesterday, I think there were only four or five, at the most, groups who had signed on as stakeholders that advocated this process, and also signed off on it.

Why was that? Was it the outside complain issue? I know some of them have raised that.

CAPUANO: No. We have approximately – a little bit more than half of the organizations that were actually active in the process. There have been – some organizations have done commentary on it, but did not seek to be truly active. But of those who are truly active, we have about half of them that support the proposal.

And you’ll have to ask them, the others, why they oppose it. But from what I’ve read, they oppose it – they don’t oppose it. They just don’t think that we went far enough.

It wasn’t so much the allowance of outside complaints, as I understand it. It was more the concern that they wanted this entity to have subpoena power. And there were many of us who thought that was not necessary, or it wasn’t appropriate at this time.

WILLIAMSON: Why did you think it wasn’t necessary or appropriate?

CAPUANO: I think it’s not necessary for many different reasons, not the least of which is that part of the proposal is to set some certain timeframes. And these timeframes are relatively short – 30 days in one case, 45 days in the next case.

And we want the process to move along, so that people don’t think that the process is just sitting there doing nothing. And if you allow a subpoena, you’re going to have those subpoenas fought in court. And they take months and sometimes years to fight those subpoenas.

And we thought that speed was of the essence, number one. Number two, that they were not necessary, because the Ethics Committee already has subpoena power. And the Ethics Committee is, in this case, going to be the entity that makes the final decisions. They can get the information.

Number three, this body will be able to take into consideration someone’s cooperation or lack of cooperation, and how they recommend that the Ethics Committee take action.

And number four, they will also be able to say to the Ethics Committee, look. Timeframes aside, we asked for this information. We didn’t get it, or we couldn’t get it, whatever the case might be. And we recommend that you get it, and if you need a subpoena, then you should do it.

So, we thought that there was adequate ability to get fair information while keeping to the timeframes that I think are very important in this proposal.

YACHNIN: This was a bipartisan task force that you led. But Republicans yesterday decided not to come out and endorse the report. And they’ve said that they’re going to announce their own proposal in January.

Why didn’t they give you the support? And could you have done more to come up with a bipartisan proposal?

CAPUANO: I don’t know. I mean, during the discussions – I mean, it was a pretty bipartisan discussion period for a long time – most everything that they asked for, they suggested, they got. Because I agree with them, it wasn’t much of a problem.

There were a handful of things that we disagreed on, and that’s normal. Even in this bill – just because something is in a bill doesn’t mean that I would do the exact same bill, if it was just me writing in a closet.

A lot of these things are compromises. And that’s fine.

Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t oppose the proposal, that they withheld comment, and that they will review it. I think that kind of keeps my hopes alive that maybe we can be bipartisan before this is all over.

SLEN: Congressman, who would make up this outside panel? Would it be members of Congress?

CAPUANO: No. It would not be members of Congress, and it would not be lobbyists.

It could be former members of Congress. They would have to be out of Congress for at least one year, or more.

It could be former judges. It could be former professors. It could be a former staff. It could be anybody who understands the process, who comes to the table with credibility.

And I think a unique aspect of this proposal is that we are calling for these members to be appointed jointly, which there is no other entity in Congress that that happens, where the speaker and the minority leader have to get together and try to come up with people that they can jointly agree on.

There is a section that says, after 90 days, if they can’t come up with somebody, well then, they go back to their corners and appoint partisan people – I said appoint partisan people, but appoint them on a partisan basis, I guess is a better way to put it.

So, that’s how they would be selected. And I personally have said all along that, when everything’s said and done, I think a lot of this will be judged on who gets appointed.

Again, just like a judge, if you appoint the wrong person as a judge, the whole system collapses.

SLEN: Would all ethics inquiries have to go through this outside committee before they reach the Ethics Committee?

CAPUANO: No. The Ethics Committee has always had the authority to self-initiate, and has done that on a regular basis. Most of the cases that the Ethics Committee has reviewed in the last 10 years had been based on their own, self-initiation.

There’s only been, I think, three member-filed complaints. And under the (INAUDIBLE) we proposed, member-filed complaints would still go direct to the Ethics Committee. All other items would probably initiate in this office of congressional ethics. And if there was any overlap, if the decided to move forward and simultaneously, or even before them, the Ethics Committee had decided to move forward, there’s a lot of internal communication that’s required and cooperation that’s required, as well.

WILLIAMSON: Sir, how do you see the – who do you envision as the initial members of this committee?

I mean, you’ve got six – you know, three and three. It’s got the makings of stalemate.

CAPUANO: Yes.

WILLIAMSON: With the Republicans not signing on to it, this doesn’t bode well for the process of actually appointing people to this body.

CAPUANO: Well, they’ll be held to account, I think, if they don’t appoint people. Theoretically, they don’t have to appoint people to the Ethics Committee, yet they do.

I believe that, even if people disagree with the process that we have come up and refuse to suggest amendments, or their amendments fail – whatever it might be – most people want the ethics process to work. And once it’s set up, however it’s going to work, whether (ph) this proposal or some other, I think people will try to play within the bounds and try to play by the rules.

There’ll be a lot of trouble, I believe, both publicly and politically and internally and externally, if someone just sits back and says, we’re not going to – we’re refusing to do this, we’re not going to appoint anybody to it.

Again, if that happens, so be it. But it certainly will not build public credibility.

WILLIAMSON: Why not an odd number of members? Why six?

CAPUANO: Very simply, because the ethics process has always been bipartisan. There was no desire, on my part or anyone else that I’m aware of, to really say, if you appoint an odd number, then somebody has to appoint that odd person. And that person could be then subject to a charge of political biases.

And that being the problem, we decided – the ethics process is not a witch hunt. The ethics process should be about ferreting out those handful of us who have had some really questionable actions. There will always be somebody who does.

But the idea is to try to keep the process clean. As a member of Congress I have a vested interest. People paint us with a broad brush, and I’m not terribly thrilled when I get painted with the brush of somebody else’s wrongdoing.

YACHNIN: Republicans have raised the concern, though, that because you’ve got a six-member panel, and only two of those members are required to initiate an investigation, you could end up with two bomb-throwers, essentially. Two of the same members that are just constantly initiating investigations against the other party.

How do you avoid that?

CAPUANO: You can’t avoid it. I mean, that’s why we did two instead of one. I think that is a much greater likelihood to have one member of this group be a potential bomb-thrower than two – number one.

Number two is, four members can still stop the investigation, so they can limit the impact of two people.

And somebody, again, if they want to appoint people that are nothing but bomb-throwers – and partisan, at that – well, then the process will break down. That could happen with any appointment of a U.S. attorney, or a district attorney, or any other prosecutor or any situation.

Again, you have to enter it – I think you should enter it – with some faith that the people that will make these appointments, and the people that will accept these appointments, are people of good faith, and that they want the process to work.

SLEN: Next question.

YACHNIN: According to Republicans, there’s also a provision in your bill that would prevent members of the board from running for office after.

What was behind the decision to put that in?

CAPUANO: Because there has been in the past, special prosecutors that were appointed to investigate a particular case, who then looked at it as an opportunity to enhance their political future.

And it was before my time, but the way it was reported to me is that, certain members of those parties decided to really use it as political fodder more than anything else, rather than trying to get to the truth. They were trying to build their own resume.

And I think that won’t help the process, and it will undermine any proposal that somebody who gets appointed these has a political agenda. Even if it’s not a Democrat or a Republican one, it might be a personal one, that I want to use this, I want to prosecute some congressman and then go run for office. That, again, undermines the entire process.

SLEN: Congressman, this has been described by some commentators as a speed bump in the ethics process, and another burdensome regulation to go through.

Would it not have been simpler and more efficient to open up the current ethics process and committee?

CAPUANO: Well, I mean, it depends how you mean “open it up.”

I mean, there is some – in public life, there is some concern, and I think legitimate concern, for inappropriate allegations. And we are a target for everything. It’s a part of life in today’s political world. We get called all kinds of names and accused of every single wrongdoing there is.

And therefore, there is some balance between someone’s reputation, who has chosen to put their reputation in the public domain. How far does that have to go, so that this does open up the process?

But it also gives those people that are going to be subject to these allegations an opportunity to be heard and an opportunity to protect their reputation, first of all by not taking any inappropriate action, or second of all, if they get an inappropriate allegation, to have an opportunity to defend themselves before they have to read about it in the front pages of the paper.

YACHNIN: But isn’t having an outside committee almost an acknowledgment that the full Ethics Committee isn’t really doing its job?

CAPUANO: Well, it’s not – I don’t know whether it is or it isn’t, because for me, I refuse to accept that the Ethics Committee hasn’t been doing its job. I can’t sit here and defend that it is, because I don’t know what they’re doing, and no one else does. I think that’s the problem.

For all I know, they’ve been doing a fantastic job. They’ve been working very hard. I know they get rapped on not doing one, but that is by people who don’t know what’s going on, either.

Since I don’t know what’s going on, that, to me, is what I’ve focused on, and that’s why the transparency aspect is so important. We’ll be able to have a better judgment as to whether they are reviewing these issues, or these allegations that are made on occasion against members, and then maybe making a determination as to whether we like or don’t like their results.

But right now, I can’t make that judgment, and no one else really can, because we do not know what they’re doing.

WILLIAMSON: Congressman, you just made mention of the fact that, if you could write this legislation in a closet, that you would have written it differently.

Do you mind stepping in there for a second and telling us how you would think about that?

CAPUANO: Not really, because, you know, the proposal is there. I participated in it. In the political process, you always give a little give-and-take. And so, no, I’d really rather not harp on the issues that I may not personally, fully embrace.

WILLIAMSON: Why do you think Speaker Pelosi chose you in particular to head this task force? And looking back on a year’s worth of wrangling, what were some of your thoughts on that?

CAPUANO: My expectation is that 434 other members told her no, and I was the last choice.

No, I don’t know. I’d like to think because the speaker trusts me, trusts my judgment, trusts my ability to put people together, and trusts my respect for the institution, that I’m not looking to trash it, but I am looking to make it work.

It’s been an interesting process for me. This is very – I did not come to Congress as some sort of an ethics reformer. I certainly have my own code of ethics that I think I’ve lived up to all my professional life.

At the same time, I’ve focused on other things. I’m more of a meat-and-potatoes type of politician. I look out for my constituents, and I try to do my job as best I can, one foot in front of each other.

I don’t necessarily look at things like ethics that are not – that don’t bite me in the nose every day.

And I think that’s another reason why maybe I was selected, because I’m not a crusader on this issue. I’m just trying to get the process to work. I’m trying to improve the reputation of the House. And I’m willing to compromise when necessary to make some improvements.

YACHNIN: You just said you’re not a crusader on the issue. But you did put in your proposal, you’d like to see a long-term task force …

CAPUANO: Yes.

YACHNIN: … to take a look at the ethics process.

Could you talk about that? And would you want to be a part of that task force?

CAPUANO: That’s always the second question. That’s the trap, is that when you propose something, of course, the reward is, well, OK, you’re it.

The reason is, because I’m afraid that in the last couple of years that a lot of our reactions and our reforms on reform, have been piecemeal. They haven’t been necessarily put together as one fell swoop.

And I think it’s important to have someone sit back – and even this. On the presumption that the proposal that I put forth gets adopted tomorrow, for the sake of discussion, there may be things that I missed. There may be – the way it’s implemented may be, oh, jeez, I didn’t think of that.

And I think that it would be a good thing to have a person who is not fully involved in the ethics process or sitting on the Ethics Committee, be able to sit back and say, whoa, wait a minute. That’s not what we meant. Or jeez, we really missed this.

For instance, some of the outside groups have been very concerned and very vocal in the fact that they don’t like the fact that this group does not have a subpoena power. Earlier, I told you why I thought that wasn’t necessary. But in a year, maybe I’ll change my mind. And not just me. Others might change their mind, too. And there may be tweaks we want to make.

So, I would argue that an ongoing review of the process – not individual cases – to see whether the process works in the way it was intended, I think that’s a good thing.

WILLIAMSON: Sir, describe next steps for folks who might not know the process going forward. How will this be set up? And when will you begin outreach to people who might sit on the committee?

But first, what has to be done legislatively to make this proposal happen?

CAPUANO: What has to be done is, we will go back into session in January. We proposed it as an amendment to the House rules, as opposed to a legislative change.

We did that, because an amendment to the House rules only has to go through the House. And legislative change would have had to go to the Senate and to the White House. And we thought it was best, since this is an internal matter to the House, not to involve the Senate or the White House.

So, we’ll go back. There will be some discussion. I have not yet had an opportunity to fully discuss it with the full caucus. Neither has the speaker. I’m sure that will happen.

We’ll try to educate our members, try to listen to them. Maybe there’ll be some amendments or some suggestions, who knows.

And at some point, I believe it’ll be put for the floor of the House as an amendment to the House rules. It’ll be an up and down vote. And if it is passed – which I presume, if it goes to the floor, it will pass – then the process will begin in trying to find people to serve on this board.

WILLIAMSON: Have you reached out to anyone yet?

CAPUANO: I have not, no. That would be up to the speaker and the minority leader when the time comes.

SLEN: Has Speaker Pelosi endorsed this?

CAPUANO: I wouldn’t want to put her on the spot. I know she’s aware of it. I believe she is supportive of the concept. She has had her hand full a little bit in the last few months. I have kept her informed of it.

I think she’s – I know she supports the concept. I will not say whether she supports every aspect of it, because I’m not convinced that she’s had the opportunity to really review it yet.

SLEN: Congressman, if you could walk us through some theoretical examples.

Tom DeLay was investigated by the Ethics Committee. Representative William Jefferson is currently under investigation by the Ethics Committee.

How would this task force play into those investigations?

CAPUANO: Well, those are the easy ones, if you want the truth. Those are not the difficult ones, because they’re so public and so widely known.

But there are a handful of cases right now, and I’d really rather not use names, because, again, by even using their names on the air, it presumes some sort of guilt. But there are many widely reported cases of members who have had allegations made against them, or questions about some of the actions they have taken. And I can’t sit here now and tell you whether they’re being investigated. And I think that will end.

This really is not targeted at the really high-profile cases – the Foley cases, the Cunningham cases, the DeLay cases. Those cases have been taken care of.

It’s really the next level of case that’s kind of under the radar that – you know, there are some other cases that are pending right now – I shouldn’t say that – that are out there, and I don’t know if they’re pending or not – that are really a little bit more difficult. They’re not the more – they’re not out-and-out bribery. They’re not, you know, inappropriate contact with a teenager.

They’re the questions of well, if you took this action, and you get a donation from this person, was the action related to the donation, or are they independent of it – a little bit more difficult to really review. And it’s really meant for those kinds of cases.

You have to understand that many of us in public life are not looking at all to break any rules. That’s not what I want to do. At the same time, to be a successful member of the House, to, I think, be a successful member of any business group or community, you have to always be pushing the envelope, and pushing and living near the edge of the line, and really kind of out there in front. It’s a very dog-eat-dog type of world out there.

And if the line isn’t clear, and the line isn’t bright, sometimes you find yourself over the line. You don’t intend to do it. And the whole idea for me is to try to provide – by providing that transparency, people like me will know, well, jeez, here’s the clear, unequivocal line, and I now can avoid it.

SLEN: But again, for those types of cases, congressman, how would the task force initiate an investigation if they don’t have subpoena power?

CAPUANO: They would have, again – two members of the six members would have to write a letter and say, we want to review this matter that we either read about, or somebody informed us about, or we have personal knowledge of.

And that begins the initial review that takes – we allow them up to 30 days – it doesn’t have to take 30 days, it could take two seconds– but up to 30 days. Then it goes to this full board of six.

And unless four of the six members say, there’s nothing there, that’s the end of it – if four of the six members say there’s nothing there – you know, Mike Capuano couldn’t have done that bad thing, because at the time he was alleged to be in California, we have absolute, unequivocal proof that he was in New York, or whatever. If that happens, that’s the end of the case.

Absent that, the case will move forward into what we call a second phase review, where they have 45 more days to do a little bit more thorough review. At the end of that period, they will make a determination.

Again, they can’t kill it them. Now it has – anything that goes into a second phase review will have to go to the Ethics Committee. It could go to the Ethics Committee with a recommendation that they dismiss it.

So, after 45 more days, they look at it and they say, you know, we didn’t know this information earlier, but we found something out. And, you know, we really don’t think Mike did that bad thing, and therefore, we think you should dismiss it.

So, it can go with a recommendation of dismissal. It could go with a tie vote. As you noted earlier, it was six members. So if it’s three and three, it could go with a tie vote, and it goes to the Ethics Committee saying, basically, we couldn’t figure this out; you really have to take a look at it.

Or, it could go with a recommendation that you should review the matter further. And the further review, obviously, could be in company with any number of findings or any other aspects.

And then the Ethics Committee then has 45 more days, once it gets it, to review it. And at the end of that period, they have to make some sort of a statement. That statement could be any number of things. It’ll be entirely up to them what they do.

But there will be – unless the first board, the OCE, unless they say, hey, we’ve looked at this and Mike really didn’t do it. You really should dismiss it. If the Ethics Committee says, you know what? We’ve looked at it, we agree with you, you should dismiss it – there’s no requirement of publicity at that point, because you’ve had two independent boards say, nothing here.

Anything other than that pretty much has to have some public disclosure, and the public will then know what the matter was and what the actions were.

SLEN: Next question.

WILLIAMSON: Sort of – I’m kind of getting exhausted just listening to this process. So, what’s the chance that a case …

CAPUANO: I lived with this for a year.

WILLIAMSON: Exactly. So, really what – truly, what are the chances that one of these gray area allegations – like you said, you know, ruling out the clear-cut cases, ruling out the things that are very visible and very much out there – that it would make it through this entire process?

I mean, how long are we talking about here?

CAPUANO: I mean, if every single day was used – I can’t remember the exact number – something like 120 days, 160 days, if every single extension and everything else was used.

We don’t expect most matters to take that long. And actually, it could be longer, because at the end of it, the Ethics Committee could say, you know, this is very serious. We’re going to have to form an investigative subcommittee, which that’s what they can do now. But again, when they do that, there will be a public commentary. It could take even longer than that.

For instance, right now, everybody knows that the Ethics Committee on occasion steps aside at the request of the Department of Justice. Whether that’s good, bad or indifferent, I’ll leave to others to decide. But that’s a pretty common practice among prosecutorial groups.

The state attorney may not move on somebody who has robbed a bank, because the U.S. attorney has said, look, we have him, we’re prosecuting him on federal law.

The difference is, under current rules, there’s no requirement that that be stated. And this would require them to then state that, at the request of the Justice Department, we are suspending our investigation.

So, it could take a while. But it also may not take a while. And that, to me, I think is the more typical situation. There’ll be a handful of people who are engaged in seriously questioned activities. I think that’s the exception, not the rule.

YACHNIN: You mentioned that you see this new office starting its investigations, because they read something or they heard something personally.

What do you see as the main source of where they’re beginning these investigations?

CAPUANO: I can only tell you what informal discussions with members of the current and past Ethics Committee. They can’t – none of them can speak about specifics. But generally speaking, they have all told me that most of their information came under the doorway in an envelope, or over the transom.

Or they read it in the paper themselves. You know, news reporters do a pretty good job unearthing certain questions. So, I think that the source of this information is pretty well known.

Some of these organizations, though they can’t officially file, they do submit documents to the Ethics Committee. And they say, here’s what we put together on Mike Capuano. You really should take a look at it, though it’s not an official filing.

Certainly, if I were on this group and a well-known group came along and gave me a stack of papers saying that Congressman Capuano did something wrong, I’d certainly review it. It doesn’t mean that I would agree with them, but I certainly would review it.

SLEN: Congressman Michael Capuano is chairman of the House Task Force on Ethics Enforcement.

Thank you for being on “Newsmakers,” sir.

CAPUANO: Thank you very much.

SLEN: Jennifer Yachnin and Elizabeth Williamson, it seems that this task force is not going to have a lot of teeth, or it will have a lot of teeth? What did you get?

YACHNIN: Well, it depends who you ask. There are a number of Republicans, and also some of the freshman Democrats, who have come out to complain that it doesn’t have any form of subpoena power, either by itself or through the full Ethics Committee.

And whether or not it can really form and conduct an investigation that finds out information remains to be seen.

WILLIAMSON: I think on the Republican side, it’s easy for them now. They’re finding the value of standing outside the process that they were involved in when they were in the majority, and sort of criticizing it and taking a sort of watchdog role. I mean, I think that’s to be expected.

But there were Republican members on the task force. And they probably argued as vehemently as their Democratic colleagues against something that had subpoena power, something that would field outside complaints.

I mean, I think those are two very key items. And I think they were the reason, as Congressman Capuano said, that a good number of the watchdog groups, who were part of this process, dropped off without endorsing it.

SLEN: Transparency. The Ethics Committee process right now is pretty closed. Does this task force, outside counsel, open it up?

YACHNIN: It doesn’t really look like it makes that big of an impact, given that they’re not publicly announcing every investigation they’re starting, that when they’re dismissing charges – especially if they’re not saying, we have decided there’s no merit here.

And if you look at the report, it’s still asking the Ethics Committee to simply announce when they’re starting an investigation, which is usually through a subcommittee.

Well, if you’re an avid reader of the Congressional Record, you can find that now.

WILLIAMSON: Yes, I just – I think that – well, their first hurdle is going to be trying to find people who are going to sit on this panel. I think trying to get bipartisan agreement on membership, and then once you’ve got six people, you’ve got the makings of, you know, a three-and-three split.

I don’t know. I mean, some of the watchdog groups have said, this is a way of sort of papering over a process that, you know, they had talked about.

The original recommendations were due in May. So, this is something that has gone on and on and on. And they got to the point where, almost as a point of order, they had to come up with a recommendation.

And I think this is really the art of the possible. This was as good as they could get.

SLEN: What’s been the reaction of Ethics Committee members to this?

YACHNIN: They’ve been relatively mum. The Ethics Committee doesn’t comment on it. And when I’ve asked members about it myself, they’ve refused to comment or discuss or to even acknowledge that they’ve talked to the task force.

SLEN: And Congressman …

WILLIAMSON: Which is their way. They don’t talk.

SLEN: Congressman Capuano said that, chances are this would pass on the House floor and become part of the House rules.

Do you see any different outcome?

WILLIAMSON: Ethics legislation, as a rule, once it makes it to the floor, who’s going to be the person who’s going to stand up and say, I vote against any kind of legislation that would improve the ethics structure? That won’t happen.

It’s the behind-the-scenes stuff. It’s the stuff that’s been going on since January until December that’s the interesting stuff. That’s where people were making their complaints known, and that’s where this got watered down. And that’s where they developed the compromises that created the product that we see today.

YACHNIN: Although there is the interesting catch that Republicans haven’t come out to endorse it. They have announced that they’ll do their own plan in January. So, it would be interesting to see a plan reach the floor and pass on purely partisan lines.

SLEN: Nancy Pelosi promised to drain the swamp. Is this a step in that direction?

YACHNIN: She had also said yesterday that she thinks this will help enforce the Ethics Committee. And that obviously remains to be seen.

You could argue that any step to increase investigations, especially in a chamber where they had a truce on ethics for so many years, has to be favorable in some light.

WILLIAMSON: It’ll be interesting to see how this sort of partisan battle over, you know, on one more front plays out. I think that that’s always good to bring these things onto the floor, to have people debate ethics.

I mean, at the very least, just having that public discussion is illuminating. And it helps the public sort of weigh in on this. So, I think that part of it is important.

SLEN: Elizabeth Williamson is with the “Washington Post,” and Jennifer Yachnin is with the “Roll Call” newspaper. Thank you for being on “Newsmakers.”

WILLIAMSON: Thank you.

YACHNIN: Thank you, Peter.

END