To follow up on yesterday’s item on Ethics Committee gridlock, guess who’s joined the Dems in wanting House Ethics reform?
Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), the former chairman of the House ethics committee, said yesterday that he will co-sponsor a bill to repeal or revise changes that Republican leaders made to the committee’s procedure at the start of the 109th Congress.
The bill is sponsored by Rep. Alan Mollohan (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the ethics committee, who along with four other Democrats has refused to adopt new rules for the committee until his proposed changes to ethics procedures are adopted or given serious consideration.
Hefley’s the second Republican to join the effort, following Chris Shays (R-Conn.), but with all due respect to Shays, this is a much bigger deal. Hefley was a widely respected chairman of the Ethics Committee before DeLay and Hastert unceremoniously dumped him as part of the GOP leadership’s drive to gut the chamber’s ethics rules.
Shays’ support suggests that the left-leaning Republicans want to fix the ethics process, but since we can count Shays’ fellow moderates on one hand, that doesn’t mean much. Hefley, however, is a conservative with allies. And as The Hill put it, “Hefley’s support is expected to provide incentive and political cover to other Republicans who are thinking about supporting the ethics legislation.”
“I believe that Representative Hefley’s co-sponsorship of this would send a very important signal to other Republicans that this makes sense and should be done,” said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21.
On the other side of the aisle, Dems are leaving nothing to chance.
Democratic leaders are taking the unusual step of whipping up co-sponsors on Rep. Alan Mollohan’s (D-W.Va.) bill to revamp House ethics procedures, aiming to get unanimous backing before they focus their efforts on pressuring centrist Republicans.
As of yesterday morning, 196 Democrats had signed on to a bill that was introduced March 1. In the evening, that number broke 200, allowing House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) to focus his efforts on the three Democratic lawmakers who have yet to sign on to the bill — Doris Matsui (Calif.), Cynthia McKinney (Ga.) and David Obey (Wis.).
Democrats believe that their near unanimous support will allow them to pressure Republican leaders to schedule a vote as well as peel off any reform-minded Republicans, Democratic leadership aides said.
Matsui, McKinney, and Obey won’t pose any problems here — they just haven’t gotten around to it yet, and Matsui only got there last week — which means the caucus will be completely unanimous. With even minimal GOP support, this proposal has a real shot.