During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would "use the power of the presidency to fight for an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations so that the public can be assured that ethics complaints will be investigated."
 
This promise stems from popular frustration with congressional scandals, which helped the Republicans lose their congressional majorities in the 2006 elections and damaged the reputations of a number of Democrats as well. Both chambers of Congress traditionally operated with ethics committees filled by current lawmakers, a fact that led some critics to argue that the committees are too tolerant of their colleagues' indiscretions.
 
In early 2007, incoming Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California pushed for an independent office, and after some internal battles, House members finally voted to create one more than a year later, in March 2008. That was several months before Obama won the presidency.
 
The House's Office of Congressional Ethics is directed by an eight-person board of private citizens, though some of them are former members of Congress. The office has the power to undertake two phases of reviews when ethics violations are alleged. Once those are done, it either recommends that the existing House ethics committee take up the case or that the case be dismissed. The board may also issue reports on the cases it reviews.
 
According to news reports, critics on both the left and the right have said they are underwhelmed by the new office's work so far, noting, among other things, that it lacks subpoena authority.
 
Meanwhile, the Senate declined to go as far as the House did, rejecting any independent body on ethics.
 
Since the inauguration, the Obama White House has directed a notable amount of attention toward ethics and transparency, though one of its cornerstones -- a ban on employing former lobbyists -- was so undermined by waivers that it earned a Promise Broken from the Obameter. Still, while the White House has been active on executive branch ethics issues, it has not mustered any effort to use the bully pulpit to toughen the congressional ethics process. A search of the White House Web site turned up no exhortations by the president, and experts in the field we spoke to said they hadn't heard anything either.
 
Obama's decision to focus on the executive branch rather than the legislative branch is not surprising. Because of the separation of powers under the Constitution, the president cannot simply order Congress to do something. He can only cajole members to act. And for now, there's no sign that he's doing that. We were tempted to rate this a Promise Broken, but the administration has continued to move forward on other ethics fronts, so we'll give it the benefit of the doubt and rate it Stalled.