GOP Further Eviscerate Oversight by Changing Little Known Records Rule
"Amid the uproar over the Republican Party's attempt to cripple the Office of Congressional Ethics, a little-noticed rule change was passed that guts an essential element of government oversight. The rules package included a sentence that read: "Records created, generated, or received by the congressional office of a Member...are exclusively the personal property of the individual Member...and such Member...has control over such records." The change, first pointed out by OpenSecrets.org and reported by the Fiscal Times on Monday, effectively means that some documents are no longer the property of the U.S. government, giving lawmakers the ability to hide critical information from an oversight investigation."
