OCE Funding in Jeopardy?

Update: OCE funding survives. Daniel Schuman reports.

There is going to be a roll call vote tomorrow on an amendment offered by Representative Mel Watt to reduce the budget of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) by 40%. Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation sounds the alarm.

Representative Watt may have legitimate concerns with OCE (which I have criticized on occasion myself), but this doesn’t seem like a good way to run a railroad. With the House Ethics Committee hiring outside counsel to investigate itself, OCE looks like the most smoothly operating part of the ethics process right now. The House should step back and reassess the process as a whole before making any more dramatic changes.