Editorial: Trump's tweet on ethics change helped Congress stick to priorities

It took thousands of outraged citizens and President-elect Donald Trump's Twitter account to pull frenzied GOP congressmen off the ceiling on a matter of ethics this week. Thankfully, it succeeded.

True, the tweet that appears to have brought rank-and-file Republicans to their senses on the Office of Congressional Ethics had more to do with timing than substance, but it recognized the value of both.

With their newly acquired control of the Senate, Republicans just couldn't wait to eviscerate an independent office that many congressmen - Democrats as well as Republicans - believe goes too far in holding them to strict ethical standards. They want to go back to the days when congressmen themselves sat in judgment of each other on ethical questions, and their changes additionally would have forbidden anonymous tips and stopped investigators from reporting some of their findings.

Voters demanding a greater accounting of their congressmen's behavior cannot help but be suspicious of such a move, made without warning behind closed doors late at night. Fortunately, even some Republicans acknowledged the irony of taking up this issue on the new Congress's first day, California Rep. Tom McClintock put it this way: "We were elected on a promise to drain the swamp, and starting the session by relaxing ethics rules is a very bad start."

Indeed.

Because the initial change came on a private vote, we can only hope suburban Republicans had the good sense not to support it - though Politico reports that 6th District U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam of Wheaton spoke on behalf of the changes. Roskam isn't saying yet, but how any congressmen, let alone enough of them to secure passage, could fail to see McClintock's logic is an indication of how deeply lawmakers resent the independent office. Is that resentment justified? It's hard to imagine that the vocal critics of government officials who put Trump and the GOP in power would agree that ethics oversight should be relaxed. At the very least, the decision to keep the independent panel for now allows time for congressmen to make their case to voters.

We can't wait to hear the reasoning to conclude that lawmakers are tougher arbiters of their ethics than an independent panel would be, but presumably now we'll have some time to hear and debate the point.

Some Republicans rushed to say that that is not entirely thanks to Trump's tweet. They said they were already on the way to reaching that conclusion in their committee deliberations. We'll have to take their word on that, but there can be little question that Trump's cyber scolding played a role in their attitude readjustment.

So, while we're still waiting for the details of the promised new approaches the new president will bring to health care and tax reform, it was oddly reassuring to see that he intends to keep his troops focused on the priorities of developing and perfecting them.