[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 48 (Wednesday, April 20, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H2156-H2157]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                TAKE POLITICS OUT OF THE ETHICS PROCESS

  (Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we need to ask ourselves every now and 
then in a moment of truth on a bipartisan basis what this House is 
doing. Ethics rules should be there to prosecute somebody who has 
broken them. The same rules should be there to protect somebody who is 
innocent.
  The Democrat members on the Committee on Standards of Official 
Conduct do not want to meet. They do not want to give the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. DeLay) due process. They do not want to give him an up-
or-down vote. They are very content to discuss it with their allies at 
The Washington Post or the New York Times. They do not want to talk 
about how many educational trips they have been on with their families, 
although there is a list. They do not want to talk about how

[[Page H2157]]

many of their family members work in their campaigns and are reimbursed 
and on their campaign payroll, but there is a list.

                              {time}  1030

  Is this what the Democrats really want? I think that the Democrats 
would be serving this House well if they would say to their ethics 
committee members, we want you to meet. We want due process for Tom 
DeLay or any other Member who may have a question about things.
  Right now we cannot address that because they will not come to the 
meetings. I ask my Democrat colleagues to do the right thing, let us 
move on with the ethics process and take the politics out of this, 
because there are a lot of questions on both sides of the aisle right 
now, and the House is being underserved by this committee.

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