Former Bay Area Congresswoman Jackie Speier has never been one to mince words, and her latest assessment of Capitol Hill culture is no exception: it's disgusting.

Speier, who represented much of San Mateo County and parts of San Francisco for over a decade, was one of the first members of Congress to seriously tackle the institution's sexual misconduct problem back in 2017. At the time, the #MeToo movement was sweeping through Hollywood and corporate America, and Speier pushed hard to reform the laughably outdated process by which Congress handled harassment complaints — a system that essentially required victims to undergo months of "cooling off" periods and mediation before anything happened, all while taxpayers quietly footed the bill for settlements.

Now, years later, she's saying those reforms didn't go far enough. And given the parade of scandals that continue to emerge from both sides of the aisle — including controversies involving her fellow Bay Area Democrat Eric Swalwell — it's hard to argue with her.

Here's the thing that should infuriate every taxpayer, regardless of party: Congress essentially built itself a system where members could behave badly, face minimal consequences, and have the public pick up the tab. Speier's original reforms were a step in the right direction, but the fundamental problem remains — these are people who write the rules that govern their own behavior. That's not accountability. That's a fox designing the henhouse security system.

The lack of meaningful oversight isn't a Democrat or Republican problem. It's a power problem. When you give any institution the ability to police itself with minimal transparency, you get exactly what we've gotten: a culture where misconduct festers and accountability is performative at best.

Speier deserves credit for sounding the alarm, both then and now. But the real question is whether anyone currently in office has the appetite to finish what she started. Don't hold your breath — reforming Congress requires Congress to vote against its own self-interest, and that's about as likely as BART running on time.