Who Do You Work For?

I heard an interview today, on NPR's Here and Now, with Congressman Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla).

Mr. Mullin wanted to discuss repealing Obamacare immediately, but before that, Ms. Chakrabarti asked him about the Republican closed door meeting on Monday (Jan. 2), where the Republican leadership tried to eliminate the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics by making it report to the House Ethics Committee (run, of course, by the majority party, currently the GOP).

Oh, said Mr. Mullin, that wasn't a secret meeting, it was our "regular conference rules meeting" to work out our rules to control the House, and we wanted to get rid of the Congressional Ethics Committee because it's a waste of time and money.  He did say "we all should be held to a higher standard."

This sounds noble until you realize that Mr. Mullin is one of six Congressmen currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics, his sin being taking time from Congressional business to make commercials for his family plumbing business, from which he also gets private income.  Challenged on this, he said it was terrible that a plumber who's owned his own business since he was 20 couldn't at the same time serve as a "citizen legislator."

Mr. Mullin doesn't seem to understand that the position of Congressman is a full time job.  Congressmen take the following oath of office:

I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

I don't see anything there about using his Congressional credentials to recommend his plumbing business.

If Mr. Citizen Legislator were to hire a plumber for his business, who spent part of his time running a side business selling real estate, I suspect that plumber would be out of the plumbing business within a couple of hours of his boss finding out.  And frankly, that's how I feel about Mr. Mullin.  Unfortunately, since I'm not in his district, all I can do is disapprove.  But his idea of "public service" seems to be a little fuzzy.