House Historian Robert Remini has just finished a magisterial yet concise history of the House, which unfortunately stops with the 2000 election. In it, Remini outlines the high points and low points--noble policy accomplishments and great debates intermixed with lengthy discussions of scandal. But if today’s scandals, from Jack Abramoff and the K Street Project to the now stiffly sentenced former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.), are not covered by Remini’s book, one need only turn to his lively description of other historical periods to get a flavor.

Remini recounts a string of scandals in 1969 and 1970, starting with influence peddling in the Speaker’s office and moving on to clear conflicts of interest involving a score or more of Members. Nineteen key lawmakers who were chairmen or ranking members of committees that oversaw auto safety, public works or taxes were given leased, insured Lincoln Continentals by the Ford Motor Co. for $750 a year. Two members of the Ways and Means Committee received hefty loans to cover the purchase of bonds in the West Virginia Turnpike. Remini notes, “This prime example of apparent conflict of interest, however, was not pursued by the House Ethics Committee.”

I’m shocked--shocked! Reading Remini’s book in page proofs (the book will be released this spring) underscores how pathetic Congress’s response has been when faced with ethical challenges throughout its history. It has regularly struggled with its constitutional responsibility to police itself, sometimes verging on partisan vendettas--what we called in the 1980s and 1990s “the criminalization of policy differences,” but more often erring on the side of doing nothing, or as little as humanly possible, to deal with ethical violations.

No doubt, the problem has been more acute in the House than in the Senate, but anyone who has followed both bodies knows that the Senate Ethics Committee has not exactly been a relentless watchdog during its history, either. In its entry on the Senate Ethics panel, the Encyclopedia of the United States Congress describes it as “often criticized for lack of action.” It fits into a two-centuries-old tradition outlined by Senate Historian Richard Baker: “Congress has chosen to deal with only the most obvious acts of wrongdoing.”

Now scandal has gripped Congress yet again, and once again many Members are trying to avoid dealing with it. Let’s face it: Many are just hoping that they can pull the covers over their heads long enough for other issues to push the scandal off the front page, so they can get back to business as usual. Others simply don’t want to shake up the comfortable ways of doing business they have operated under for years. Change, after all, is difficult. Still others, understandably, look at reform efforts as challenges to their own integrity and ways of operation.

All three of these factors shaped the 11-5 vote last week in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to reject an Office of Public Integrity as part of their lobbying reform bill.

The last reaction best describes that of Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio). Voinovich has a well-deserved reputation as a man of personal integrity. He is also someone who cares about institutions. But his defensive reaction to the proposal to create an Office of Public Integrity needs a response.

Let me say first that I have no quarrel with any of the six current members of the Senate Ethics Committee. I do not think that the Senate Ethics panel is in the same deep ditch as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which has been wholly dysfunctional. And I do believe that some of the problem is perceptual: The pledge of confidentiality means that much of the work done in the committee is unknown to the public, and the natural assumption that the committee is therefore doing nothing may well be wrong. More disclosure would surely help the committee add to its credibility.

But there is no evidence over a long period that the committee has been at the forefront either of aggressive enforcement of ethical standards or aggressive education of Members and staff about right and wrong--much less any enforcement at all to punish the incomplete filing of lobbying disclosure forms, or failures to file altogether. The Senate committee, like the House committee, remains an essentially passive operation, waiting to do anything about allegations of ethical violations until it is forced to do so by public pressure or public disclosure, sometimes waiting until a full-fledged prosecutorial effort is already under way (a factor that gives the committee an excuse to suspend any action until the prosecution runs its course).

Even an annual disclosure of activity by the committee would not eliminate the central dilemma here. If Congress has no credibility on ethical standards, it will have less ability to make tough decisions that citizens see as legitimate. With all institutions under siege now and for the foreseeable future, a credible ethics process is absolutely critical for the basic integrity of Congress.

Having current Members police their colleagues and themselves entails a built-in conflict. Congressional ethics committees are damned as partisan or ideological if they are too aggressive, and they are damned as part of the old boy network if they are too passive. Congress needs to find a way to build in credibility for investigations undertaken, and for investigations not undertaken, while continuing to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities under Article 1, Section 5.

Voinovich is wrong if he believes that the only problem with the ethics process is its confidentiality. At stake, too, is its credibility, and that of the institution it is designed to protect and police. The Office of Public Integrity, as designed by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), strikes a careful balance, which keeps the core and vital role of the Ethics Committee intact while creating a credible entity to ensure reasonable enforcement of ethical standards and, for the first time, a meaningful disclosure and enforcement process for lobbying activity and lobbyists.

I wish it went further; I wish the plan incorporated a proposal by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) that is drawn directly from the largely successful independent ethics commissions in Florida and Kentucky. But even if the commission idea does not succeed, on its own or along with an office, the OPI itself is an essential ingredient of real reform.

Congressional Quarterly’s story on this issue said, “The Senate appears to be divided into two camps: the institutionalists who believe the Senate should continue to police itself, and those who believe that a much more aggressive approach for investigating ethics is necessary to prevent the next scandal.”

This assessment is wrong. The true institutionalists, the ones who care about the long-term future of Congress, are those who understand and support the need for real ethics reform.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.