Lawmakers on Tuesday adopted a proposal led by Rep. Thomas Massie aimed at publicly naming House members who paid out sexual misconduct settlements using taxpayer dollars. 

The issue has become a rallying cry in recent months, as some call for transparency around what they’ve dubbed the “slush fund.” 

Members of Congress must now foot such bills themselves, thanks to a 2018 law that also requires the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights to publish an annual report disclosing misconduct payments and whether they have been reimbursed. 

But Massie said he feared there were “loopholes” in that law that need to be fixed.

“I would urge my colleagues to vote for this in the interest of transparency and openness,” the Kentucky Republican said Tuesday on the floor.

Massie’s resolution directs the OCWR and House Ethics Committee to release within 60 days a “single consolidated list” of members who paid out settlements, along with aggregate totals for misconduct by House employees. The resolution was easily adopted Tuesday afternoon, with no member voting against it.

It comes as Congress grapples with how to clean up its image amid recent allegations of sexual misconduct, which led to the resignations of former Reps. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. 

Earlier in the year, the House had sidestepped other calls for transparency, waving aside a broader push from Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., in March.

Mace’s resolution would have required the House Ethics Committee to preserve and publish records of its sexual misconduct investigations, with names of victims redacted. 

Reps. Michael Guest and Mark DeSaulnier, chair and ranking member of the House Ethics Committee, said at the time that Mace’s proposal “could chill victim cooperation and witness participation in ongoing and future investigations.” 

Massie said in a brief interview after Tuesday’s vote that he tried to “limit the scope of mine” to avoid that objection, while also “broadening the definition of a claim for sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or sexual misconduct, so that it might catch things that weren’t disclosed.”

Both Massie and Mace brought up their resolutions as questions of privilege, a process that allows members to force floor votes on certain topics even without the blessing of leadership.  

Rep. Kat Cammack said Tuesday she voted in favor of both proposals as someone who wants to “really see a change in the culture up here on Capitol Hill.”

“I welcome any attempt,” said the Florida Republican, who was tapped to co-lead a bipartisan working group that is searching for ways to crack down on sexual harassment and help staffers report it.   

Some have complained that Congress has done little since the MeToo movement to ensure accountability for bad behavior and needs to push more aggressively for change. 

While the House opted to refer Mace’s resolution to the Ethics Committee earlier this year, where it has little chance of moving, the South Carolina Republican tried another strategy with more success. At an unrelated House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in March, she offered a motion to subpoena the OCWR for records of certain settlements made prior to December 2018, the date when the law that updated what’s known as the Congressional Accountability Act was enacted. 

The panel agreed to the subpoena by voice vote, and Mace later shared a summary of results from the subpoena on her social media accounts, promising to reveal more after working to redact pages of documents.

But “you shouldn’t have to go get a subpoena through a committee to go find this,” Massie said Tuesday.

After losing his primary to a challenger backed by President Donald Trump, the Kentucky Republican said he was looking to check more items off his list before the end of the current Congress. 

“Six months left, I’m going to do something every week, so that I won’t be sitting at home saying, ‘I wish I’d done that.’”