This agency that targets Republicans while shielding Democrats must be dismantled

The Office of Government Ethics is a bureaucratic machine with a redundant purpose and should be dismantled.

Steve Roberts is a Partner and Co-Chair of the Political Law Group at Lex Politica, focusing his practice on lobbying compliance, campaign finance, and political committees.

Created in 1978 amid the hysteria following Watergate, OGE operates on a flawed premise: that every public official is a latent crook, requiring constant oversight by unelected mandarins. This assumption insults the intelligence of the American people, who are perfectly capable of judging their leaders at the ballot box. Ethics in government is not preserved by faceless desk jockeys wielding stacks of financial disclosure, recusal, and divestiture forms; it is enforced by citizens casting votes. Outsourcing this sacred responsibility to a bloated agency like OGE diminishes democracy itself while costing taxpayers more than $20 million annually.