this came in the wake of the jack abramoff scandals back in 2006, 2007, when our organizations, all the organizations here worked on drafting and promoting the honest leadership and open government act that set up a whole series of new congressional ethics rules along with ethics rules for lobbyists. and one of the key problems that we all noted of the congressional ethics process is enforcement. enforcement has historically as always until oce, was the responsibility of members of congress oversees members of congress. and both the congressional ethics committee, both in the house and the senate side are run by members of congress and they used to -- the senate still does -- operate largely in secrecy. it has always claimed that they are doing a great job. they do it all confidentially. even though the public doesn't know what they're doing, that is the basis of their effectiveness. well, that was ridiculous. following in the wake of the jack abramoff scandal, where the house ethics committee did almost nothing at all, we recognized that enforcement is the major problem. so then we sta