[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23859-23860]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        CONVENIENT RULE CHANGING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page 23860]]


  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, earlier today during the one minutes I got 
up and admonished the House Republican Conference because we heard at 
the time that there was a possibility that they would adopt a rule 
change that would overturn a previous and current GOP rule that 
requires House leaders to automatically relinquish their post if they 
are indicted on charges that could carry a sentence of 2 or more years 
in prison.
  Now, according to Congress Daily and several other sources, in fact 
the Republican conference today did agree by voice vote to overturn 
this GOP rule, which would mean that it is no longer the case that 
House leaders, whether it be the Speaker, the majority leader, 
whatever, would automatically relinquish their post if they face such 
an indictment.
  I said before and I will say again, now that we know the House 
Republican Conference has indeed adopted this rule change, that it 
really is inappropriate and that they should be admonished, because for 
many years they had touted this rule as an example of how they were 
always going to do the right thing and basically show that they were 
beyond reproach.
  Now I wanted to read, if I could, some sections or quote from some 
sections of the Washington Post today that explain essentially why this 
rule change is taking place. It says, ``GOP Pushes Rule Change to 
Protect DeLay's Post. House Republicans proposed changing their rules 
last night,'' and it in fact has changed, ``to allow members indicted 
by State grand juries to remain in a leadership post.
  ``The proposed rule change, which several leaders predicted would win 
approval at a closed meeting today,'' and it did, ``comes as House 
Republicans return to Washington feeling indebted to'' majority leader 
DeLay for the slightly enhanced majority they won in this month's 
elections. DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last 
year that resulted in five Democratic House Members retiring or losing 
reelection.
  ``House Republicans adopted the indictment rule in 1993 when they 
were trying to end four decades of Democratic control of the House . . 
. They said at the time that they held themselves to higher standards 
than prominent Democrats.''
  Well, obviously, Mr. Speaker, their holding themselves to higher 
standards is no longer the case, because now when they see it might 
impact one of their leaders, they simply change the rule.
  The Washington Post goes on to say in this front-page article that, 
``The GOP rule drew little notice until this fall, when DeLay's 
associates were indicted and Republican lawmakers began to worry that 
their majority leader might be forced to step aside.''
  ``House Republicans recognize that DeLay fought fiercely to widen 
their majority, and they are eager to protect him from an Austin-based 
investigation they view as baseless and partisan,'' said one of the 
Republican Congressmen. He is quoted as saying, ``That's why this 
(proposed rule change) is going to pass . . . because there is a 
tremendous recognition that Tom DeLay led on the issue to produce five 
more seats for the Republicans.'' After emerging from a meeting of the 
Republican Conference, it was assumed that in fact the rule would pass.
  It did, in fact, pass. I think that it is absolutely disgraceful that 
it did. And I was very pleased also to see in Congress Daily today that 
the Democrats, who have a similar rule that requires a ranking member 
to step down in the event of an indictment, are now working to change 
the caucus rules to include a provision similar to the one that the GOP 
just overturned.
  So what we will have now is the Republicans saying that they never 
wanted to do this and that if any of their leadership ever was indicted 
that they would certainly ask them to step down. Now that they face the 
possibility, they have decided to change their minds. It does not say 
much about ethical lapses, and it certainly, I think, will get a lot of 
scrutiny from the American people who will not want to see this change 
take place.

                          ____________________