[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7776-7777]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ETHICS CHANGES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, since the beginning of the year, the House 
has been conducting its business without an organized Committee on 
Standards of Official Conduct in place to investigate possible 
unethical behavior by Members of Congress. Republicans have tried to 
blame Democrats on the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for 
this standoff, but the fact is they have nobody to blame but 
themselves.
  At the beginning of 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. That is the only way ethics 
reform can honestly be addressed, but the Republican leadership ignored 
that protocol and strong-armed enough of its Members into passing new 
and weakened ethics rules.
  The American people need to understand that these new rules will 
allow either party, Democrat or Republican, to protect its own Members. 
Under the new Republican rules, if the majority of the committee cannot 
determine whether or not an investigation should proceed, after 45 days 
of receiving a complaint, the complaint would simply be dropped. No 
action would take place.
  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. Now, this 
is not the way the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is 
supposed to work. Under the old bipartisan rules, if the committee 
could not come to an agreement on how to proceed after 45 days, an 
investigative subcommittee was created.
  The weakening of the ethics rules by House Republicans did not fool 
editorial writers, both liberal and conservative, who follow House 
proceedings closely; and I just wanted to give some examples.
  The conservative Chicago Tribune recently said, How do House 
Republicans respond to ethical lapses? By trying to bury them.

                              {time}  1245

  The Hartford Courant concluded, ``The committee has been careening 
toward ethical oblivion in recent years, as the majority Republicans 
have relaxed the standards, eased up on investigations and created 
trapdoors through which alleged transgressors could escape.''
  The Republican leadership did not stop at just weakening the ethics 
rules, the Republican leadership also purged three Republican Members 
of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, three Members who 
were not in the pockets of the leadership.
  After losing his chairmanship of the Committee on Standards of 
Official Conduct, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) told The 
Washington Post that there is ``a bad perception out there that there 
was a purge in the committee and that people were put in that would 
protect our side of the aisle better than I did. Nobody should be there 
to protect anybody. They should be there to protect the integrity of 
the institution.''
  Mr. Speaker, congressional Republicans should listen to their former 
ethics chairman, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley). The 
integrity of the House of Representatives is much more important than 
any one Member.
  These actions by the Republican majority really make one wonder why 
the changes are necessary now. It seems clear to me that the Republican 
leadership went to all of this trouble to protect one of its leaders. 
Last month the Wall Street Journal, which has a conservative editorial 
page, charged there is an ``odor,'' an ``unsavory whiff'' at the very 
highest reaches of this House. Every single day, it seems, more 
revelations come out about questionable actions by a member of the 
Republican leadership. These daily revelations should concern every 
Member of the institution.

[[Page 7777]]

  My Democrat colleagues and I realize the integrity of the House is at 
stake. We cannot allow weakened ethics rules to move forward to protect 
anyone, and it is critical that the Committee on Standards of Official 
Conduct be allowed to do its job and that is impossible under the new 
Republican rules.
  Mr. Speaker, as the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
DeLay) said back in November 1995, ``The time has come that the 
American people know exactly what their representatives are doing here 
in Washington, are they feeding at the public trough, taking lobbyist-
paid vacations, getting wined and dined by special interest groups, or 
are they working hard to represent their constituents? The American 
people have a right to know.'' That was the majority leader, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), in his own words 10 years ago.
  Let me say, the majority leader was right, the American people 
deserve answers and they will not get those answers under the weakened 
Republican ethics rules. That is why Democrats are fighting so hard to 
have the old rules restored. If the majority leader believes his 
comments from 10 years ago, I would think he would join us in our 
fight.

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