Maxine Waters charged with ethics violations faces trial before a Congressional committee

Stephanie Condon reports in CBSNews,

The House ethics committee today released three charges of ethical wrongdoing against Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California.

Tom Murse reported in ThoughtCo,

Back-to-back charges against two veteran members of Congress in the summer of 2010 cast an unflattering light on the Washington establishment and its historic inability to mete out justice among members who stray beyond ethical boundaries they helped to draw.

In July of 2010, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct charged U.S. Representative. Charles B. Rangel, a Democrat from New York, with 13 violations, including failing to pay taxes on rental income he received from his villa in the Dominican Republic. Also in that year, the Office of Congressional Ethics charged U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, with allegedly using her office to provide assistance to a bank in which her husband owned stock to ask for federal government bailout money.

The potential for highly publicized trials in both cases raised the question: How often has Congress expelled one its own? The answer is–not very.

Types of Punishment
There are several major types of punishment members of Congress can face:

Expulsion

The most serious of penalties is provided for in Article I, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "each House [of Congress] may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member." Such moves are considered matters of self-protection of the integrity of the institution.

Censure

A less severe form of discipline, censure does not remove representatives or senators from office. Instead, it is a formal statement of disapproval that can have a powerful psychological effect on a member and his relationships. The House, for example, requires members being censured to stand at the "well" of the chamber to receive a verbal rebuke and reading of the censure resolution by the Speaker of the House.

Reprimand

Used by the House, a reprimand is considered a lesser level of disapproval of the conduct of a member than that of a "censure," and is thus a less severe rebuke by the institution. A resolution of reprimand, unlike a censure, is adopted by a vote of the House with the member "standing in his place," according to House rules.

Suspension

Suspensions involve a prohibition on a member of the House from voting on or working on legislative or representational matters for a particular time. But according to congressional records, the House has in recent years questioned its authority to disqualify or mandatorily suspend a member.

Read more here.

This has been going on since 2010? They sure take their time!