[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 35 (Friday, February 24, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


        THIS IS NOT LIVING UNDER THE SAME LAWS AS EVERYONE ELSE

  (Mr. DOGGETT asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, with the ink barely dry on the one bill 
that we passed making Members live under the same laws as everyone 
else, the Speaker yesterday continued to promote a bill creating a 
special rule that would make those who bring ethics charges against him 
or any Member pay his lawyer's fees and the Ethics Committee's costs 
when no disciplinary action results.
  The Speaker claims this rule would not intimidate citizens interested 
in cleaning up Government. I disagree. It would definitely tend to 
intimidate. No citizen, and certainly no Member of this House, should 
be intimidated when the issue is ethics in Government and putting that 
in first place.
  As a former justice of the Texas Supreme Court, as a chair of its 
ethics task force, I know some with valid ethics complaints would be 
discouraged, would think twice before blowing the whistle on anyone 
under the threat of having to pay a Member's lawyer fees with that 
hanging over their head.
  Many will not blow the whistle at all, making the American people the 
real loser.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not living under the same laws as everyone else. 
It is just plain wrong.


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