Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA) opposes the creation of an independent panel to investigate ethics violations, proposed by Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL), even though he submitted a proposal in 1997 to create such a panel. The Hill newspaper reports that Dreier and then-Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) proposed the creation of an independent panel to oversee the ethics process in the wake of the ethics investigation of Newt Gingrich. Dreier stated admitted that the failures of the Ethics Committee came from the “conflicts inherent in a completely self-disciplining system.”