With ethical transgressions in the House piling up, people keep looking to the House Ethics Committee to get to work. But for recent months, the panel hasn’t been able to operate or even hold a hearing because it’s chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), insists on hiring his political aides to oversee committee operations, despite an explicit rule that mandates “a professional, nonpartisan staff” on the Ethics Committee.
And so the House has waited. Dems have been adamant that the committee adhere to staffing rules, Republicans have asserted the rule doesn’t matter, and pending investigations against Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham have been left in limbo. Yesterday, however, committee members reached “an agreement in principle.”
Reps. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the chairman and ranking member of the panel, reached agreement on organizing committee staff during a meeting yesterday. By doing so, they have cleared what appeared to be the remaining obstacle to organizing the Standards of Official Conduct Committee, as the ethics panel is formally known. […]
Mollohan predicted that the committee would be able to fill the vacant staff positions over the next three weeks, meaning it will likely be fully operational when Congress returns in September from the August recess. Once staffed and organized, the committee is expected to undertake an investigation of overseas trips taken by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Lobbyist Jack Abramoff is alleged to have paid for DeLay’s travel to England and Scotland, in violation of House rules.
The committee may also launch an investigation of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.), who engaged in a real-estate transaction with a lobbyist who lost nearly $700,000 in the deal.
Under the agreement, the committee will hire a chief counsel/staff director and four investigative lawyers. In addition, Hastings can bring over one of his staffers (Ed Cassidy, Hastings’s 10-year chief of staff) but he will operate independently of the committee’s investigative staff, staff director, and chief counsel.
Have you noticed how often Dems have won these fights over ethics? The GOP stacked the deck for Tom DeLay, the Dems raised hell, and Republicans backed down. The Ethics Committee was going to work under looser guidelines, Dems raised hell again, and Republicans backed down again. Now the Ethics Committee was going to have partisan staffers, prompting Dems to once again raise hell, and Republicans to give Dems what they want. Maybe this is an issue on which the GOP feels vulnerable?
Once the committee actually starts working, an investigation of DeLay is expected to take at least a year. Look for a report from the panel in late summer 2006 … right around the time the campaign season is starting to pick up.