Today, Congressman Perlmutter spoke at a press conference regarding House Democratic freshman ethics legislation. Congressman Perlmutter has been a long-term champion of ethics reform. Below is an unofficial transcript of his speech:
"Hi, my name is Ed Perlmutter and I'm from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. My colleagues have been so eloquent about the institution and about the dreams and the hopes and the desires that embodies millions of people. My take on this is more practical. When I was running (for office), this was a big issue...corruption in Congress, particular people, not many but some really abused the public trust. And my question was, well there had to be a rule, there had to be something, these guys committed crimes. What happened? So I took a look, there are hundreds of pages of rules, ethics rules, in the Congress today. And it became my opinion, what we needed was an independent enforcement body to really take a good look, as (Congressman) Bruce Braley said to really remove the politics from it and do it in a fashion that was objective and reasonable. So that is why I'm here to support (the gathered freshman members) in their efforts to have an independent commission or an independent body of some sort to really take a good look at...abuses, irregularities, problems. This is a small fraction of the people in the Congress, Democrats and Republicans really are honorable people wanting to do the best for this country. We come at it different ways but people want to do the best. There are some who take advantage of the system and I think that the independent commission or agency is the kind of body we need to make sure enforcement of these rules takes place..."
