Earlier this week, there were multiple reports that House Republicans were pressuring House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resolve the impasse over ethics rules with House Dems. For his part, however, Hastert expressed little interest in undoing the damage he and Tom DeLay and worked so hard to do earlier this year.
The caucus pressure, however, seems to have had an effect. We can’t be sure he means it, but Hastert is finally starting to move in the right direction.
Speaker Dennis Hastert committed himself to getting the House ethics process functioning again and didn’t rule out allowing a vote that could reverse most of the Republican-backed rules changes adopted in January.
“I do not rule it out,” the Illinois Republican said. “I think people ought to look at those changes and have a chance to discuss them. That’s fine with me.”
He continued: “I didn’t put those changes in to favor one person…. It’s a political game right now. I want to get beyond the political game.”
Up until now, Hastert had given no indication that he’d consider putting the old, stronger ethics rules on the table, which make yesterday’s remarks pretty significant.
And unlike all of the recent overtures to Dems, this one wasn’t rejected out of hand.
“That certainly sounds positive,” said West Virginia Rep. Alan Mollohan, the ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee, when told of the speaker’s remarks.
The real fun would be a floor vote on reversing the DeLay-inspired rules. While the changes were made unilaterally by GOP leaders in January, and some of the votes were held in secret among House Republicans where there was no recorded vote, this would be a chance to get every lawmaker on the record voting either for or against reasonable ethics guidelines for the chamber.
I’m confident the weakened rules would get shot down — who wants to go on record in support of watered down ethics? — but it’d be entertaining to see just how many Republicans abandon the changes they embraced just a couple of months ago.