This stopped being funny quite a while ago. In the nine weeks since the election, House Republicans have changed their own rules about having a leader serve while under indictment, suggested that the Ethics Committee chairman (a Republican) has to replaced because he’s acted in too neutral a fashion, and now are preparing to make it harder for the Ethics Committee to even investigate violations of House rules.
In the wake of back-to-back ethics slaps at the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, House Republicans are preparing to make it more difficult to initiate ethics investigations and could remove the Republican chairman who presided over the admonishments of Mr. DeLay last fall.
A House leadership aide said a package of rules changes to be presented to the House when Congress convenes on Tuesday could include a plan that would require a majority vote of the ethics panel to pursue a formal investigation. Now, a deadlock on the panel, which is evenly split between parties, keeps a case pending. The possible change, the aide said, would mean that a tie vote would effectively dismiss the case.
To maintain a reasonable sense of decorum, the House Ethics Committee is the only committee to have an equal number of Dems and Republicans. Under the new GOP plan, possible inquiries into wrongdoing can be effectively rejected, regardless of merit, simply by having the parties’ members stick together. And, since Hastert and DeLay want to stack the Committee with loyal, right-wing ideologues, lawmakers can flout ethics rules with impunity, knowing full well that the Ethics Committee has been de-fanged.
“It is our responsibility to uphold a high ethical standard,” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said in a statement Wednesday. “Removing a chair of the ethics committee for upholding that standard would be a stain on the House of Representatives.”
That’s true, but it’s irrelevant. DeLay and Hastert simply don’t care anymore — about staining the institution in which they serve, propriety, or ethical standards. They are drunk with power and believe, after being rewarded by voters, that they are invulnerable.
Indeed, it’s not the only rules change under consideration.
The current Ethics Committee standards reviews conduct that “reflects poorly” on the House itself. DeLay and Hastert, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, want to change that as well.
…Republican leadership aides are drafting rules changes that would narrow the ethics panel’s discretion in judging whether a member’s conduct failed to meet the standard of reflecting “creditably on the House of Representatives.”
That discretion was fundamental to the findings against Mr. DeLay during the autumn — and could be again in a separate controversy involving House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Ney of Ohio. Proponents argue that the changes seek to protect only the due-process rights of accused lawmakers to defend themselves. But the new language has been developed thus far without input from Democrats and appears designed to protect Republicans in anticipation of renewed challenges over ethics.
I noticed that Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, said the GOP leadership was effectively issuing a “declaration of war” against House ethics rules. I assume DeLay is somewhere thinking, “So?” If ethics were a concern for the Republican leadership, DeLay & Co. wouldn’t have ignored these rules in the first place.
Dems, to their credit, aren’t taking these developments lying down. They’re obviously in the minority, which offers them limited power, but they’re moving ahead with a more forceful opposition with all due diligence. For example:
Democrats are planning to try next week to force a floor vote on a proposal requiring any member of either party’s leadership to step aside if indicted on a criminal charge. The move would reverse last month’s vote by Republicans, in a closed-door party meeting, to eliminate such a requirement for Republicans to protect Mr. DeLay should he be indicted in a campaign finance inquiry under way in Texas.
Will efforts like these work? I don’t know, but it’s clearly worth trying to find out. Republicans, in large numbers, have indicated that they didn’t support the change, so calling them to account on the House floor would be a way to get these lawmakers on the record. It also helps remind reporters and voters who may have forgotten about this ridiculous stunt.
One possible key to helping turn the tide in 2006 is to remind the public, as often as possible, that Republican arrogance in Congress has gone over the cliff. In the early 1990s, the GOP effectively used a variety of ethics difficulties among House Dems to chip away at the Dem majority, before taking the chamber altogether in 1994.
In other words, starting using “Republicans in Congress” and “ethically-challenged” in your political conversations now.