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Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t think members of Congress should be romantically involved with House staffers — even if the staffers don’t work for them.
Johnson weighed in during a news conference Tuesday on what has been a hotly debated topic on Capitol Hill: Should members of Congress be allowed to pursue relationships with staffers outside of their own offices? Johnson said it’s an easy call for him: They should not.
“I can’t believe it would be acceptable in any situation,” Johnson said of lawmakers dating any staffers in the House. “I think we should as a bare minimum in Congress have rules and traditions that are adhered to in corporate America, so that is an easy one for me.”
Johnson’s comments come as efforts to reduce harassment on Capitol Hill are ramping up and as a bipartisan working group is targeting reforms aimed at making Congress a safer and more professional environment for women.
The issue of whether members should be allowed to date staffers outside their office has been at the center of a debate about how to stamp out sexual harassment on the Hill. Many members argued in the days after the resignations of Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales that lawmakers should be barred from any sexual relationships with House staff — not just those who worked for them.
But the effort has come up against some critics who argued that with more young and single lawmakers coming to Washington, consensual relationships outside of a members’ office were beyond the bounds of what Congress should police.
Democratic Women’s Caucus Chair Teresa Leger Fernandez swiftly applauded Johnson’s position, arguing it should be included in a slate of proposals from the bipartisan working group on sexual harassment.
“From the beginning, we’ve pushed to extend the prohibition against members having sexual relationships to ALL staff,” she said. “The power dynamic that leads to abuse exists for all staffers, not just those within the members own office.”
She added she looks forward to “finalizing our work” with the Republican Women’s Caucus “to reform the culture of sexual misconduct on the Hill.”
It is already against House rules for members to pursue or date their own staff, but Johnson’s comments may give the bipartisan working group more momentum to pursue the effort.
GOP Rep. Kat Cammack told CNN before Johnson’s comments Tuesday that the working group was about “70%” there on effort to roll out a list of proposals.
But she did argue there was still some work to do.
“There’s a lot of consensus around the training. There’s really good consensus on awareness and streamlining. Now the hard part, which is how do you address consequent accountability and ending the retaliation on Capitol Hill?” she said.
One of the more delicate parts of the negotiation has been how to deal with lawmakers who break the rules, how quickly they should be held accountable, and how to balance the interest in accountability with the fact that members are elected by voters.
“You have to balance the constitutional role that we have in protecting people back home and their right to representation and bad behavior up here on Washington in on Capitol Hill,” Cammack said. “That to me is probably one of the most frustrating things, is if constituents back home knew how their member was operating up here on Capitol Hill, the people back home would take care of business in the following election. But unfortunately … we don’t wear body cameras up here.”
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