Recusals would be appropriate, but don’t count on it

April 27, 2005

OK, so House Republicans are caving and will undo the damage they did to the chamber’s ethics rules. It will, among other things, clear the way for a thorough investigation into Tom DeLay’s multiple and ever-escalating ethical problems.

But what will DeLay find once he gets there? To put it mildly, five friendly, smiling faces.

All five Republicans on the House ethics committee have financial links to Tom DeLay that could raise conflict-of-interest issues should the panel investigate the GOP majority leader.

Public records show DeLay’s leadership political action committee (PAC) gave $15,000 to the campaign of Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Pa. — $10,000 in 2000 and $5,000 in 2002. Hart would chair a panel to investigate DeLay if the committee moves forward with a probe.

The same political committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, also has donated to the campaigns of ethics Chairman Doc Hastings of Washington, Judy Biggert of Illinois and Tom Cole of Oklahoma. They are among scores of Republicans DeLay has contributed to. Cole and the remaining committee Republican, Lamar Smith of Texas, contributed to DeLay’s legal defense fund.

The Ethics Committee is the only panel in Congress with equal numbers of Dems and Republicans, five each. The problem here, of course, is that DeLay and Hastert carefully selected five toadies who will do as they’re told and toe the hard-right line.

In theory, the financial connections could prompt responsible lawmakers to recuse themselves from an investigation. There is some precedent for this: none other than Harry Reid stepped aside in 2002 when then-senator Robert Torricelli was accused of financial misconduct and referred to the Senate Ethics Committee. Because Reid had given $500 to Torricelli’s legal defense fund, he thought it best to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Kenneth Gross, an attorney who has represented Democrats and Republicans on ethics issues, said the financial ties on the committee could be a problem. “I would advise the committee not to use a member who had received contributions from DeLay’s leadership PAC to head the investigation,” he said.

Any chance the House Republicans will follow this higher ethical standard? Nah, I didn’t think so either.

Somehow, I would think Biggert would be the most independent-minded of the bunch. She’s the only moderate Republican on the panel. And her ACU rating is only 70–third-lowest among Illinois Repubs. We only need one Republican to break ranks, and Biggert’s the most likely candidate at the moment.

  • One problem with the entire ethics committee concept is that most of the members of the committee will have financial and political ties to most of their colleagues, especially the leadership. That’s just reality. I’m not sure it’s practical to expect members to recuse themselves over this.

    The real problem is that the members are picked by the leaders of their own party in the first place. You can bet that neither party going to stock the committee with fair-minded and independent individuals that have a sense of ethics that transcends party loyalty. The new Republican members installed by Delay and Hastert are just a much more blatant and transparent version of business as usual.

    I know it will never happen, but maybe the ethics committee members should be picked by the leaders of the opposite party. Would this even be practical? Now that Zel Miller is gone, are there any party members that would actually make a point of turning on their own party when it wasn’t justified? If there are, you know they’d be picked first. Also, would we get members who were ethical and unbiased, or would each party stock the committee with incompetents from the other party that could be easily manipulated?

    To use the Senate as an example, I’d gladly accept Lieberman and Ben Nelson on the ethics committee if we could get McCain and Snowe in return. Should the Democrats propose this as part of a reform agenda, or am I just being a utopian?

  • For David Conway – I think you’re on the right track, but picking members of the Committee for your opponents is not likely to work, either. It would be too easy to pick obtructionists or ideologues. However, If I may, I’d like to tweak your proposal by requiring that each member selected by one party be approved by the other party. In other words, all ten Committee members, including who will be the Chairman, would have to be approvewd by both a majority of the Democrats as well as a mojority of the Republicans. What do you think?

  • Although it would be nice to remove DeLay from the leadership post, there has been some discussion about the tactic of letting the whole thing drag on as close as possible to the 2006 vote. In that same vein, from a whipping boy perspective, let the committee stand as it is and point out to the voters just how corrupt the Republican Party really is. Any thoughts?

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