The Congressional Accountability Act attempts to make Congress live under the same laws it imposes on the public. The House approved the bill 429-0.
On the first day, the anti-lawyer, anti-spending, anti-regulation Republican House created a new government office that will issue new regulations, hire high-priced lawyers and defend against expensive new lawsuits. It turns out that applying laws to Congress mostly means giving new rights to 27,000 congressional employees. Workers who could not unionize now can. The Capitol Police will collect overtime pay, at an estimated cost of at least $800,000 a year. Workers may be entitled to ergonomically safe desk chairs to avoid repetitive-motion injuries. No one can even guess how much it will cost to fix other workplace hazards in the overcrowded warrens of the Capitol. The new Office of Compliance, costing at least $3 million a year, will make sure congressmen comply with these sweeping laws.
The most contentious area may be civil rights. Staff members will be able to sue their bosses for racial discrimination or sexual harassment. If employees win their lawsuits, they could collect hefty punitive-damage awards – all paid by their “employers,” the taxpayers. Liberal civil-rights activists are tickled by the idea of forcing Republicans to justify in court the paucity of black congressional staffers. “I don’t think they’re going to like this law in a couple of months,” says Barbara Arnwine of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights.
Republican advocates for the bill agree that it may impose uncomfortable burdens on Congress – and that, they say, is the point. Supposedly Congress will see firsthand how much these laws cost the rest of America, and pass better ones. Still, GOP leaders didn’t want to take this principle too far. The bill does not require Congress to abide by the Freedom of Information Act, which allows citizens access to many internal executive-branch documents. And the Republicans defeated a Democratic amendment that would have required members of Congress, like other federal employees, to abide by strict rules on earning outside income or taking gifts from lobbyists.
