When Boehner thanked Hoyer for the delay, both sides of the aisle erupted in applause.

Even though Republicans welcomed the postponement, they said the decision to yank the ethics resolution demonstrated disorder within the Democratic caucus and a leadership out of touch with member sentiment. Earlier Wednesday, Hoyer predicted the House would back the creation of the independent ethics entity when it was brought up on Thursday despite increasingly vocal Democratic opposition, including from many members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said the ethics bill was pulled because of the “last-minute” GOP proposal.

“We’re not going to jam anybody,” Emanuel said. “It was [Capuano’s] view to give it a week’s time. If it takes more time than that, fine. If it takes less than that, fine.”

Democrats won back the House majority in 2006 partly because of public unhappiness over high-profile corruption scandals, such as the bribery conviction of Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) and the Indian gambling and lobbying abuses of Jack Abramoff.

Pelosi made improving House ethics a key part of her leadership, and Capuano has been working with Smith, the top Republican on the ethics task force, for nearly a year on restoring credibility to the House as an institution.

On the last day of the 2007 session, Capuano finally unveiled his proposal. Republicans on the task force refused to say whether they supported it until Wednesday, when they announced their opposition and offered a substitute.

Capuano’s proposal would create a six-person board to oversee the new Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), with joint appointments if the Speaker and minority leader can agree on the choices.

The office would initiate investigations and make recommendations to the full ethics committee, and no members or lobbyists could serve on the board.

GOP lawmakers and a growing number of Democrats are particularly unhappy with a provision in the proposal that would allow any two members of the OCE to initiate an investigation into charges against a member. They argued this would enable partisan witch-hunts.

Indeed, early this week, senior GOP aides had compiled a list of 10 likely Democratic targets of ethics allegations, an apparent threat of what to expect if the plan were allowed to move forward.

During the Rules Committee meeting, Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) demanded to know whether Boehner knew about and endorsed the creation of such a list. He said he did not.

“What is troubling to me is that the partisanship has already begun,” McGovern said, dubbing the purported list the “epitome of cynicism.”

Smith outlined the Republican alternative, which would focus on making changes to the existing ethics committee by adding four former lawmakers to the panel and giving the House inspector general the responsibility of accepting allegations against members and forwarding them on to the full ethics committee. The chair of the committee would alternate between parties each Congress.

The proposal would provide monthly public reports on the status of the panel’s investigations, and if panel action becomes blocked by a partisan stalemate, after 90 days, the panel would pass along its findings as of that date to the Department of Justice for further action.

Some Democrats immediately expressed concern that the GOP proposal would raise constitutional questions because it would allow people who are not current members of Congress to weigh in on determining a sitting lawmaker’s fate.

Mike Soraghan contributed to this story.