[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 9, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H496-H497]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            ISSUES OF ETHICS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of South Carolina). Under a 
previous order of the House, the gentleman from California (Mr. George 
Miller) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, very often when we are 
out among the people we represent and holding town hall meetings and 
meeting with various organizations, we are asked the question, Why do 
you not run the government like a business? Unfortunately, today, there 
is some evidence that we are running it like a business, but we are 
running it like some of the worst businesses in America.
  Today, what we see, as the Republicans gain seats in the House of 
Representatives, as the Republicans get more and more control of the 
House of Representatives, there is less and less space for honest 
debate in the House. There are less opportunities for the minority to 
offer amendments, to offer bipartisan changes to legislation to come to 
the floor. If we put together a bipartisan coalition that the 
Republican leadership does not like, they simply are not allowed to 
offer that amendment.
  This is at a time when young men and women are dying to bring 
democracy to Afghanistan and to Iraq, and yet we cannot find that 
democracy on the floor of the House of Representatives. It does appear, 
as the old saying says, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts 
absolutely; and that is the situation we have come to.
  We now have the House that has an ethics process that reeks of 
favoritism, reeks of conflicts of interest, reeks of punishment of 
those who dare to look at the evidence and make an independent 
judgment. We now see that those individuals are taken off the 
committee. The chairman of the committee is sacked for no apparent 
reason.
  There was a unanimous vote in the committee in the last session of 
the Congress three times to admonish the majority leader of the House. 
The committee apparently looked at the evidence, listened to the 
witnesses, and on a unanimous basis decided that that action was 
warranted. We then see that those individuals who participated, or 
several of those individuals, including the chairman who participated 
in that unanimous decision, were taken off the committee.
  This starts to look like the businesses that have terrified the 
American people, the Enrons, the WorldComs, where we see what happens 
is the CEO starts to appoint his friends to the board of directors. 
They start to cook the books, they start to steal the shareholders 
money, they start to mislead the investment communities. What we see 
here is that apparently the majority leader did not like the outcome of 
the actions by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, and so 
they started to change the rules.
  There apparently is some anticipation that the majority leader could 
be subject to an indictment out of the State of Texas. As a result of 
that, there was an effort to change the rules; and in fact, the rules 
were changed within the Republican Caucus to say that, if indicted, 
that leader could continue to serve, or a leader in the position of 
leadership could continue to serve. Of course, that was a voice vote 
and a secret caucus.
  When that vote was exposed to daylight, when they found out that vote 
was going to be challenged by our side of the aisle, by the Democrats 
in the House, they, of course, changed that action because it would not 
stand up under scrutiny; but they did not do anything.
  Unlike the old rules, the investigation would have proceeded because 
the committee is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. It 
would have proceeded. Now, unless one person from one party or another 
crosses the party lines and agrees to the investigation, the 
investigation dies. We now have the situation where the party that may 
have somebody under investigation, in effect, has a veto.
  That is not the ethics process that the public is entitled to or the 
Members of the House are entitled to. We now see that that is the rules 
of the House.
  We now also see that in the replacement of the Members of the 
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, we have two Members of the 
committee who have contributed to the defense fund for the majority 
leader. If they are called upon to undertake an investigation, because 
apparently that matter is still pending before the Committee on 
Standards of Official Conduct, they will be in a position of having to 
decide whether to proceed or not, and they have already cast their vote 
with their contribution to that defense fund.
  So we now have a Committee on Standards of Official Conduct that is 
severely conflicted with respect to its duty to the people of the 
country and to the Members of this House.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not what the people's House should look like. 
This is not how the people's business should be done, whether it is 
about allowing space for true and honest political debate, as many 
Members on the floor today earlier argued for the ability to talk about 
the asylum provisions in the bill that we will vote tomorrow, but the 
time was not allotted to do that. The time was not allotted to have 
that kind of discussion that affects so many people. Why did they do 
that? Because they do not want the discussion. As our colleague, the 
gentleman

[[Page H497]]

from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), said, it appears that they know they 
can win the vote, they just do not believe they can win the debate. 
Time and again we see that happening.
  As severe as that problem is with respect to closing down democracy 
in the House, the changing and the corrupting of the ethics process is 
far more severe because our first obligation is to make sure that 
Congress does, in fact, do its business in an ethical fashion, not in a 
corrupt fashion, and that Members of Congress are held to an ethical 
standard that justifies their support by the people of their districts.

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