CREW has already expressed disappointment with the proposal prepared by the House Ethics Task Force.   Today, we re-issued our statement from Melanie Sloan:

Despite scandal after scandal and a new Congress that promised to change Capitol Hill’s “culture of corruption,” it appears that the months wasted haggling over new ethics rules have been all for naught. Given that the new Office of Congressional Ethics will not accept complaints from outsiders nor have subpoena power, in effect, the song remains the same. All we have here is another layer of bureaucracy added to prevent members from being held accountable for their unethical activities.

The full House will vote on the report's proposals in January:

Democrats on the last day of the 2007 session of Congress released the final report of a task force devoted to creating an independent ethics office to police lawmakers, but stopped short of holding a vote on it.

Only the task force’s four Democrats endorsed the long-overdue report, while the panel’s four Republicans withheld formal opinion, indicating that they may decide later to dissent with or support the plan or ask for additional adjustments. The report was originally due May 1.

Republicans have privately blasted provisions in the proposal, as The Hill reported last week, and circulated 10 written arguments against it, claiming that aspects of the new Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) would subject members to political witch hunts and create a “star chamber” in the House.

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), who chaired the task force and was eager to wrap up its work by the end of the year, said he realized the sensitive nature of handing an outside entity the power to probe lawmakers and acknowledged that not everyone will be happy with the OCE’s creation.