Ethics Committee Quotes

The Congressional Ethics Committees are the brothers and sisters of member of Congress and no one wants to investigate their brothers and sisters.

In a Congressional ethics investigation of members there is a conflict of interest…in a sense, the norms and practices of the institution are on trial.

In April, I asked my staff to determine if Senate rules and relevant laws would allow me to direct the trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock. In May, my staff worked with outside counsel and with the Senate ethics committee staff to draft a written communication to the trustees. After obtaining pre-approval by mid-June from the Senate ethics committee, I issued a letter directing my trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock in my family's trust.

We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.

... a refugee from the Ethics Committee ... an ethically challenged individual ...

If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don't hold it back for retaliatory purposes.

There is a kind of innate conflict of interest when members of congressional ethics committees are called upon to judge their colleagues.

In 2003, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a year later, a national ethics committee in France, said that face transplantation would be going too far. The risk of complication would far outweigh the benefits.

Anytime a member of Congress wants to travel abroad - which we do from time to time as part of our official duties - we are required to check with the House Committee on Ethics as to whether the trip follows the ethics rules by which federally elected officials are bound. Not so with Supreme Court justices.