West Virginia Rep. Alan Mollohan, the ranking Dem on the House Ethics Committee, probably knew he was taking something of a risk. The GOP had gutted the chamber’s ethics rules in January and he knew his committee would be a joke unless the changes were scrapped altogether. He led other Dems on the panel in blocking the committee from organizing and conducting business unless Republicans agreed to reverse course and bring back the stronger, more effective, ethics rules.
Mollohan didn’t know if holding the committee hostage would work. Would he shut down the process for the entire two-year Congress? Would he get blamed for the impasse?
Fortunately, we now see that Mollohan’s efforts are paying off in a big way.
House Republican leaders on Tuesday moved toward reversing rules changes that have paralyzed the ethics committee, a decision that could clear the way to an investigation of the overseas travel of Representative Tom DeLay, the majority leader, and other House members.
Lawmakers and other senior officials said that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and other leaders had concluded that the only way out of the ethics impasse was to abandon the rules changes opposed by Democrats who have refused to allow the committee to get to work.
Republicans say the ethics fight, combined with the attention that has been focused on Mr. DeLay over fund-raising and travel irregularities, has not only become a distraction but also a political liability that they want to defuse.
Lawmakers will be presented with a plan to bring back the original ethics rules today and receive a vote before the weekend. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the matter will come to the floor late Friday afternoon — guaranteeing less exposure of House Republicans having to give up their plan to undermine the ethics process and giving Dems less of a chance to crow about it.
And what does this mean for Tom DeLay? Recent accusations about ethical lapses will once again be considered by the Ethics Committee.
Republicans on the committee say they will launch an investigation of DeLay’s handling of overseas trips and gifts as soon as the impasse over the rules is broken. The Washington Post reported last weekend that Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff charged DeLay’s airfare to London and Scotland to his American Express card in 2000.
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. DeLay said that he will meet with the committee chairman and the ranking Democrat, and that his staff is assembling documents to turn over to the committee. The panel admonished DeLay three times last year for what it deemed inappropriate official behavior.
For what it’s worth, Republicans know they screwed up by trying this stunt in the first place.
“We fumbled the ball badly,” said one senior Republican official who spoke anonymously because he did not want to be viewed as critical of the leadership.