When House Majority Leader Tom DeLay tried to change ethics rules so they wouldn't apply to him, the outcry from watchdog groups was deafening. Thanks largely to their efforts, House Republicans decided Monday night that it was unwise to push ahead with the rule change. But another bureaucratic sleight of hand is underway that could completely halt the House's ability to police itself. Clemente and Homan of Public Citizen's Congress Watch explain.
Craig Holman is a legislative representative at and Frank Clemente is the director of, respectively, Public Citizen's Congress Watch. To learn more about this issue, please click here.
Congress narrowly escaped making a huge mistake when, late last night, Republican leaders in the House decided not to rewrite ethics rules in Tom DeLay's favor. Until last night, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives was set to vote Tuesday on a set of rule changes that would have seriously weakened if not utterly destroyed an already lax ethics process. If adopted, these changes would have given a blatant green light to all forms of corruption among government officials.
Thanks to strong activism by a range of government watchdog groups in recent months, late last night Republican leaders partially backed off. While the GOP retreat is good news, don't think the House is turning over a new leaf in self-regulation. Another vote is scheduled for today that hasn't received as much public attention, but could result in a complete halt to ethics investigations into congressional corruption.
The ringleader of the effort to gut ethics is Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. DeLay is known among friends and enemies as "The Hammer" for his autocratic style of leadership and ability to shake down the most recalcitrant corporate lobbyists seeking favors from Congress.
Fueled by the recent election—which solidified Republican control of Washington—DeLay wanted to rewrite the ethics rules so that there is effectively no possibility of being found to be in violation of such rules.
That's the way the game is sometimes played by the powerful in Washington—when caught red-handed, change the rules. You see, DeLay has been rebuked three times in recent months by the House ethics committee for ethical misconduct. One of these rebukes was for promising Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., that he would endorse Smith's son who was running for Congress if the father would agree to vote in favor of the Medicare prescription drug bill. To his credit Smith told DeLay to take a hike.
Following these rebukes, DeLay engineered a secret change in Republican Party rules in November. If allowed to stand, this change would have permitted him to remain the second most-powerful Republican in the House even if he's indicted by a Texas grand jury for money-laundering illegal corporate campaign contributions in Texas state elections. But thanks to an outpouring of opposition from citizen activists and numerous editorial pages, DeLay agreed late last night to go back to the status quo.
Last week—in an act of unparalleled hubris and arrogance—DeLay proposed two rules that would free him and others from accountability. The first was rejected by his caucus last night because of strong public opposition. The other very dangerous measure will be voted on today.
The withdrawn ethics change would have removed the primary standard used to determine if a member of Congress has violated ethics rules—that is, the appearance of corruption. It is very difficult to prove quid pro quo corruption short of an FBI sting operation, which is why the appearance of corruption is the bedrock standard for ethics regulations. It is the standard used for guiding ethical conduct in the executive branch, in the U.S. Senate and even in the military. Currently, it is a violation of House ethics rules to act in such a way that creates the appearance of corruption or reflects poorly on the House.
If a certain type of behavior does not pass the smell test—such as when DeLay was rebuked last October by the ethics committee for hosting a golf outing with energy industry lobbyists while working on energy legislation—it should not pass ethics rules. The new proposal would have eliminated this standard for ethical conduct and made only actual illegal activity a violation of ethics rules. In essence, it would have changed the ethics standard in the House to "catch me if you can."
The remaining ethics rule change to be voted on today would deadlock the ability of the ethics committee to investigate complaints. The ethics committee is evenly split between Republican and Democratic members. In order to avoid inaction, a complaint automatically triggers at least an investigation within 45 days if the committee is deadlocked. The new rule change would require a majority vote to even begin looking into the validity of ethics complaints. This requirement will halt most investigations.
This rule change combined with a Republican leadership plan to replace the current ethics committee chairman, Joel Hefley, R-Colo., with a DeLay lackey, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, will likely kill any ethics investigations for the next two years. Hefley was the one who got the ethics committee to agree unanimously to rebuking DeLay three separate times last year. For The Hammer, if you can't control the chairman, then just replace him.
This new proposal to make it harder for Congress to police itself complements an old change in House ethics rules. In 1997, the House voted to forbid any outside group or citizen from filing an ethics complaint against a member of Congress with the House ethics committee.
Right now, Congress has a dysfunctional ethics system. But adopting the rule change requiring a majority vote to conduct an investigation combined with imposing an ethics watchdog as chairman who will assist the criminals more than try to catch them, will create a virtually non-functioning ethics system. The only winners will be those corporate interests that peddle influence with Congress so they can feed at the public trough.
