[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 48 (Wednesday, April 20, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H2156]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         WEAKENED ETHICS RULES: WHO ARE THEY TRYING TO PROTECT?

  (Ms. WATSON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, since the beginning of this year, the House 
Republican leadership has worked to undermine the ethics process here. 
First, the leadership floated an ethics proposal that would have 
allowed Members of its leadership to continue to serve in leadership if 
they were indicted. When that did not go over too well, the leadership 
decided it could protect one of its own by making it more difficult to 
investigate unethical behavior. The leadership rushed through a new 
rule that would end an ethics compliant after 45 days if no agreement 
could be reached on how to proceed. Under the old rules, if the two 
parties could not come to an agreement, a subcommittee was 
automatically appointed to investigate.
  Finally, to guarantee that Republican leadership would be able to 
quash any ethic complaints, they purged the committee of three members, 
including the chairman, who were not always willing to toe the party 
line. Then they replaced them with party loyalists.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership is going to extreme measures 
to weaken our ethics rules. It makes one wonder just whom they are 
trying to protect. Ethics and morals have been overtaken by hypocrisy.

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