[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 70 (Tuesday, May 24, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3887-H3890]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         APPROVAL RATE OF CONGRESS AT LOWEST POINT IN 10 YEARS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Westmoreland). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) is recognized for half the remaining time until midnight as 
the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, as we prepare to return to our districts 
for the Memorial Day work period, I think it is important for us to 
take a look at where we are today and how exactly we got here in the 
Congress. I think, for the most part, and certainly a lot of recent 
polls indicate it, the American people are fed up with the Congress, 
that the approval rate of Congress is at its lowest point in 10 years, 
and it leads me to wonder how did we get to this place? I think we have 
to take a look back at the first 5 months of the 109th Congress this 
year to get some answers.
  Earlier this year, the Republican leadership went ahead and changed 
the way the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct does its 
business. In the past, whenever ethics changes were being considered, 
they were addressed in a bipartisan fashion with both Democrats and 
Republicans at the table, and that is the only way ethics reform can 
honestly be addressed. But the Republican leadership ignored that 
protocol and strong-armed enough of their Members to pass new and 
weakened ethics rules, without any support from our Democratic 
colleagues.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the American people understood that these new 
ethics rules were basically a blatant attempt by the majority to 
protect one of their Republican leaders. These new rules allowed either 
party, Democrat or Republican, to protect its own Members. Under the 
new Republican rules, if a majority of the committee could not 
determine whether or not an investigation should proceed after 45-days 
of receiving a complaint, that complaint would simply be dropped. Since 
the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is made up of five 
members from each party, either side could prevent an ethics 
investigation from moving forward against one of its Members.
  That is not the way the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is 
supposed to work. Under the old bipartisan rules, which have now been 
restored, an investigative committee was created after a 45-day 
deadline if a majority of the committee could not determine how to 
proceed.
  The weakened ethics rules by House Republicans did not fool anybody, 
certainly not the editorial writers around the country, both liberal 
and conservative. They followed the House proceedings closely and they 
were essentially fed up with the new Republican rules.
  I will just give you some examples. The conservative Chicago Tribune 
said, ``How do House Republicans respond to ethical lapses? By trying 
to bury them.''
  The Hartford Current wrote, ``The committee has been careening 
towards ethical oblivion in recent years as the majority Republicans 
have relaxed the standards, eased up on investigations and created trap 
doors through which alleged transgressors could escape.''
  Finally I cite the Sarasota Herald Tribune, which wrote, ``If the 
GOP's leaders in Congress continue to change the rules to protect one 
of their own, they will have ceded the ethical high ground they pledged 
to take in 1994.''
  Again, this is what I call the Republican abuse of power, and it is a 
major reason why people have lost faith in Congress and why Congress is 
at a 10-year low in terms of people's support or feelings about the 
institution.
  But the Republican leadership did not just stop at weakening the 
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct rules. No, the leadership 
also purged three Republican members of the Committee on Standards of 
Official Conduct earlier this year, three members who ruled against a 
Republican leader the previous year.
  After losing his chairmanship on the Committee on Standards of 
Official Conduct, the Republican gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) 
told the Washington Post that there is ``a bad perception out there 
that there was a purge in the Ethics Committee and that people were put 
in that would protect our side of the aisle better than I did.''
  He continues, ``Nobody should be there to protect anybody. They 
should be there to protect the integrity of the institution.''
  Mr. Speaker, it took congressional Republicans nearly 4 months to 
finally listen to their former ethics chairman and the media. But, 
fortunately, in the end they did restore the old bipartisan ethics 
rules. The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) was clearly right, the 
integrity of the House is much more important than any one Member, and 
I think it is time the Republican leadership learn that lesson, not 
only on that Committee on Standards of Official Conduct issue but in 
general.
  The abuses of power by the Republican majority really make you wonder 
why they are necessary now. It seems clear to me that the Republican 
leadership went to all this trouble to protect

[[Page H3888]]

one of its leaders. The Wall Street Journal charged ``there is an odor, 
an unsavory whiff at the highest reaches of the House of 
Representatives.'' Every single day it seems the Members of this body 
and the American people are subjected to another revelation of 
questionable actions by one of our colleagues. It is a constant drip 
that is getting close to a large puddle.
  Fortunately, as I said, the American people were not fooled by this 
abuse of power by the Republican majority with the ethics process. They 
saw the new rules for what they were, nothing more than an attempt to 
protect a powerful Republican leader, and finally, after media and 
public outcry became too much for the Republican majority to endure, 
Republicans agreed to reinstitute the old bipartisan ethics rules.
  However, it is important to remember that had the public been 
indifferent and had the Democrats on the Committee on Standards of 
Official Conduct gone ahead and allowed the committee to organize under 
the weakened rules, today this House would be structured under ethics 
rules that would allow either side, Democrat or Republican, to shield 
its Members from scrutiny.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican ethics reversal was good for this 
institution and good for the American people.
  Now, there are still a lot of questions remaining about what the 
Republican majority is doing with the Committee on Standards of 
Official Conduct. Despite the majority's change of heart on weakening 
the ethics rules, there are still several areas where the Republican 
leadership is continuing to delay any action by the Committee on 
Standards of Official Conduct.
  The new chairman of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct 
has said that he wants to appoint his chief of staff from his personal 
office to be the new staff director of the Committee on Standards of 
Official Conduct. This action would defy House rules, which state that 
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct staffers are to be 
nonpartisan.
  It is inconceivable that the rules would allow the chairman to 
unilaterally appoint a chief counsel without immediately running afoul 
of the rules. Trying to do so would be a clear violation of the rules, 
as well as an affront to the committee's tradition.
  The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is supposed to be a 
place where Members can get straight, unbiased, trustworthy ethics 
guidance. How can Members who might have disagreements with the House 
leadership feel comfortable going to the committee for advice if they 
fear committee staff members are incapable of performing their official 
duties in a nonpartisan fashion?
  My point is that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct 
should be a politics-free zone. One way to ensure politics stops at the 
committee doors is to hire staff whose first loyalty is to the ethics 
rules of the House and second loyalty is in equal measure to the 
chairman, ranking member and remaining members of the committee. If 
committee staff are perceived as being loyal to or owing their position 
to only one member of the committee, their ability to render advice and 
investigate sensitive ethics issues will be called into question.
  I would say once again, Mr. Speaker, the American public see the 
games the Republican leadership is playing with the Committee on 
Standards of Official Conduct and they simply do not like it. They 
would rather see this committee go back to work in a bipartisan 
fashion, and now, so the Congress can address their concerns.
  Now I want to go from the one issue of abuse of power here in the 
House related to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to the 
other outrageous abuse of power in the other body, in the Senate, and 
this relates, of course, to the Senate filibuster.
  Senate Republicans have spent much of the last 4 months fixating on 
seven extreme judges President Bush once again sent up for confirmation 
after they had already been rejected during his first term. Rather than 
dealing with rising gas prices and an economy that continues to falter 
and other issues that people really care about, Senate Republicans 
attempted to have a power grab, unlike any other in the history of the 
U.S. Senate.
  Fortunately, Mr. Speaker, the Republican quest for absolute power in 
Washington was temporarily halted last night by 14 Senators. And this 
was a truly bipartisan group. Seven Democrats and seven Republicans 
came together to save the Senate from moving forward with an extreme 
power grab that would have undermined the very checks and balances that 
have existed in our Nation for over 200 years.
  Senator Frist and the Senate Republican leadership were prepared to 
wage an unprecedented political power grab on the filibuster. They 
wanted to change the Senate rules in the middle of the game and wanted 
to attack our historic system of checks and balances with the 
filibuster so that they could ram through a small number of judicial 
nominees who otherwise could not achieve a consensus.
  In reality, the power grab by the Senate Republican leadership in 
trying to eliminate the filibuster did not really have much to do 
probably with the current judicial nominees, but instead it was an 
attempt by the White House and conservative interest groups to clear 
the way for a Supreme Court nominee eventually who would only need 51 
votes rather than 60.
  Conservative interest groups and a large majority of Senate 
Republicans are not happy with the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme 
Court. They do not want to see another David Souder or Anthony Kennedy 
nominated to the Supreme Court, even though they both were confirmed 
with nearly unanimous bipartisan support. They would prefer to see 
President Bush nominate a Supreme Court Justice like Clarence Thomas, 
who, because of extreme views, could not garner strong bipartisan 
support. In Justice Thomas's case, he only received 52 votes, and he 
has proven to be an extremist.
  If the Senate had proceeded with this power grab and gotten rid of 
the filibuster, President Bush would have been able to appoint right-
wing judges to the Supreme Court.

                              {time}  2245

  The President has already said he most admires Justices Scalia and 
Thomas and I think it would be frightening to think of another Justice 
with that same mold.
  Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day a group of 14 bipartisan senators 
kept the Senate Republican leadership from moving forward with this 
extreme power grab. The bipartisan compromise that was reached last 
night shows that President Bush is not going to be able to ignore the 
moderate views of these senators when he appoints future justices to 
the Supreme Court, and I think that is certainly good news for our 
country.
  I think certainly what was happening here, Mr. Speaker, was that the 
White House was manufacturing a crisis with these judicial nominees. 
The American people know that there was absolutely no reason for the 
Senate to take the measure of eliminating the minority's right for 
input on judicial nominees. The White House has essentially 
manufactured this judicial crisis because if you look at the record, 
over the past 4 years, the Senate has confirmed 208 of Mr. Bush's 
judicial nominations and turned back only 10. That is a 95 percent 
confirmation rate, higher than any other President in modern times, 
including presidents Reagan, the first President Bush, and President 
Clinton. In fact, it is thanks to these confirmations that President 
Bush now presides over the lowest court vacancy rate in 15 years.
  Despite what Senate Republicans are saying today, judicial nominees 
have not always received an up-or-down vote on the Senate Floor. In 
fact, back in 2000, it was Senate Republicans that attempted to 
filibuster two of President Clinton's appointments to the Ninth Circuit 
Court. Senator Frist, the architect, of course, of eliminating the 
filibuster now, voted to continue a filibuster of a Clinton nominee, 
Richard Paez.
  There are also other ways the senators can prevent a nominee from 
receiving an up-or-down vote on the Floor, and this has happened many 
times in the past, which shows why it is not the case that there has to 
be an up-or-down vote. Judicial nominees have often been stalled in the 
Senate Committee on the Judiciary. More than one-third of President 
Clinton's appeals court nominees never received

[[Page H3889]]

an up-or-down vote on the Floor of the Senate because Senator Hatch, 
then the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, refused to bring 
the nominees' names up for a vote in the committee.
  And, I think it is extremely disingenuous of Senator Frist to say 
that all nominees are entitled to an up-or-down vote when he himself 
helped Senate Republicans block President Clinton's nominees in the 
late 1990s. We did not hear him talking about an up-or-down vote then 
when President Clinton was nominating judges.
  I just want to say, once again, Mr. Speaker, I think that the 
bipartisan agreement reached last night was extremely valuable. It will 
keep two of the President's nominees from moving forward who really do 
not deserve to be appointed, and I would hope that the President would 
learn from last night's action that, unlike the House, the Senate is 
not a chamber that will be a rubber stamp for his extreme views. Let us 
hope that President Bush was listening and will resist nominating 
extreme right-wing judges to our courts in the future.
  But all of this, not only the action in the House on the ethics 
rules, but also the action in the Senate on the filibuster, I think 
they are examples really of how the Republican majority has abused its 
power. And the consequence of that is that the public is increasingly 
disappointed and feels that the Congress does not do its job, that it 
is essentially a do-nothing Congress. And as we approach the Memorial 
Day recess, I think I need to stress that, that I believe the reason 
why the polling and the media shows that people no longer have faith in 
Congress or that the support of Congress as an institution has dropped 
significantly is because of the Republican leadership's fixation on 
these issues that consolidate their power, that seek to consolidate 
their power without focusing on the real issues that affect the 
American people.
  A USA Today CNN poll that was released today, Mr. Speaker, showed 
that the American people are fed up with Republican control of Congress 
and are ready for a democratic Congress. And who can blame them? If 
they had been watching the abuses of power that had been taking place 
in both the House and the Senate in the last four months, they would 
have to be disgusted. Beyond that disgust, I think it is clear that 
they just want Congress to address the issues of importance in their 
lives, and we are going to be going into a Memorial Day recess without 
most of those issues being addressed. It really has been, for the last 
five months, a do-nothing Congress.
  For five months now, congressional Republicans have done nothing to 
reverse their abysmal economic record. The fact is that middle class 
families are being squeezed at the gas pump, at the pharmacy with high 
drug prices, and in the grocery store. There are growing signs of a 
faltering economy, with President Bush still having the worst jobs 
record in history.
  Instead of addressing the serious kitchen table issues of American 
families, education, health care, you name it, Republicans are focusing 
on legislation that is written for the special interests and will 
actually harm middle class families.
  Instead of increasing the minimum wage and expanding prosperity, 
Republicans are focused on undercutting bipartisan ethics rules.
  Instead of creating good jobs with good paychecks by completing the 
much-delayed highway bill, for example, Republicans choose to focus 
instead on undercutting the checks and balances on judicial nominations 
by focusing on the filibuster.
  Instead of enacting an energy bill that improves our communities and 
brings down gas prices and tries to create more energy independence, 
the Republicans have channeled their energy into replacing Social 
Security with a risky privatization scheme that clearly most Americans 
do not support, and the President probably is going to have to 
eventually abandon.
  And, instead of passing a budget that reflects the values of 
America's families, Republicans brought the entire Federal Government 
to intervene in the personal tragedy of just one family, and I am, of 
course, talking about the Terry Schiavo case. I think it is no wonder 
that the American people are not pleased with Congress, and I think it 
is time congressional Republicans take a hard look at these polls. I do 
not say, Mr. Speaker, that we should always be looking at polls, but in 
this case, the polls reflect what people are thinking.
  I go back, and I will, of course, go back to my district during the 
Memorial Day recess, and I know I am going to hear from people who are 
saying, why are you not talking about health care, why are you not 
talking about education? What are you doing about the trade deficit? 
What are you doing about the budget deficit? What is the reason why a 
crisis for everything from housing to groceries to gas continue to go 
up, and we in Congress do not address the issues.
  I am simply saying that the Republican leadership should listen to 
their constituents. The polls reflect, I think, what our constituents 
are telling us. I think the American people really want these abuses of 
power to stop. They do not want to hear us talking about the filibuster 
and about the ethics process; not that those are not important, they 
are, in terms of the procedures and how we proceed. But, in each of 
these cases, the Republicans wanted to change the procedure here so 
that they could get their own way, and instead of concentrating on 
those procedural issues and trying to change the rules, they should get 
down and look at issues like the rising cost of college, the rising 
cost of health care, the rising price of gas at a time when most 
people's wages are shrinking.
  It is simply time, I think, for us to get down to the people's 
business. I hope that when we come back after the Memorial Day recess, 
that we can see the end of these Republican abuses of power, we can see 
the end of their trying to change the rules and, rather, focusing in a 
bipartisan way on trying to address some of the Americans concerns of 
the American people.


                      Steps Toward Peace in Israel

  I just wanted to switch to a different issue, if I could, Mr. 
Speaker, for a few minutes, because I know that this Thursday is an 
historic day when the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is 
going to be visiting Washington to talk to President Bush. I wanted to 
discuss briefly the recent developments in the Middle East peace 
process and how that relates to this historic visit to Washington by 
the Palestinian leader.
  This is the first time a Palestinian leader has visited the United 
States since peace talks in 2000 collapsed into bloodshed. This is a 
critical opportunity for Abbas to prove to Israel and the world that 
their commitment to peace goes beyond rhetoric and that the Palestinian 
leadership is taking concrete steps towards peace.
  Just as this is an important opportunity for Abbas to show that he is 
committed to peace, Abbas's visit to Washington is an equally important 
opportunity for the United States to further encourage reforms in the 
Palestinian Authority. As one of my constituents said to me this 
afternoon, and this is one of the reasons that I am here this evening, 
the United States must be willing to hold Abbas's feet to the fire.
  That being said, in order for negotiations to move forward, Abbas 
must rise to the occasion. He must take steps to dismantle Hamas and 
the Palestinian terrorist network. Security is of the utmost concern 
for Israel and Hamas is a direct threat to the safety of the Israeli 
people.
  Mr. Speaker, Israel has taken remarkable risks over the last few 
months to advance the peace process.
  By the end of this summer, Israel has agreed to withdrawal its 
military and civilian presence from the Gaza Strip and four settlements 
in the West Bank, and this decision was made at great political, 
financial, and emotional risk for the Israeli people.
  In his speech today in Washington at the annual meeting of the 
American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, Israeli Prime 
Minister Ariel Sharon said that he is willing to work with Abbas to 
ensure a secure transition in Gaza. Cooperation on this level is an 
unprecedented step. It is critical that the Palestinians work to ensure 
a safe transition, that any looting or violence is prevented. Israel 
has taken the dramatic step of withdrawal; Abbas must then ensure that 
Gaza does not become a haven for terrorists.

[[Page H3890]]

  This morning, Sharon also announced that as a sign of good faith, he 
plans to release 400 Palestinian prisoners. This is in addition to the 
500 prisoners freed in February as part of an agreement between the two 
sides.
  I would urge President Bush to be firm in his meeting with Abbas on 
Thursday that any support of terrorism will not be tolerated, that 
these next couple months will be critical if the peace process is to 
continue, the disengagement, and the upcoming Palestinian elections 
must go smoothly.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like all of my colleagues to be cautiously 
optimistic about the situation in Israel. These initial steps are 
heartening, but the words must be met with action.
  I had the opportunity almost two years ago to go to Israel at the 
time when there was a cease-fire and there was relative peace. At that 
time Mahmoud Abbas was the Prime Minister, and I realized very quickly 
that he was not in a position of authority and that it was not likely 
that the peace process was going to continue or that the cease-fire was 
going to continue. Very quickly, after myself and the rest of the 
congressional delegation left, the violence began again, Abbas ceased 
to be the Prime Minister, and we went through essentially another year, 
over a year of violence, if not longer than a year.
  I hope that this time is different. I hope that because of the 
overtures and the steps that Ariel Sharon has taken, that we can see 
now a situation where Abbas is ready to negotiate and to end the 
violence. But I do think it is incumbent upon President Bush to make 
that point, that we are not going to see peace, we are not going to see 
any new negotiations, we are not going to see any roadmap unless Abbas 
and the Palestinian Authority immediately take steps to ensure that 
there is peace and that violence does not continue.

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