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Some members worry that ethics war may backfire for both parties |
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By Susan Crabtree
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Posted: 06/07/07 06:45 PM [ET] |
Several House members on both sides of the aisle are worried that their leaders’ increased use of the House floor as an ethics battleground will backfire as more lawmakers are expected to be indicted this Congress.
Two ethics resolutions triggered by the indictment of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) passed the House Tuesday night with wide margins. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) sponsored one that would force the ethics committee to investigate Jefferson, while Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) offered another that would trigger an ethics committee investigation if any member is indicted or has criminal charges brought against him or her.
Despite the lopsided votes in favor of the resolutions, several Republican and Democratic members privately said they felt pressured into voting in favor of the bills. Others expressed concern that an ethics escalation, if not an all-out ethics war, will overshadow their agenda on issues such as Iraq and immigration.
“You have to have leadership that keeps this to a low thunder rather than lightning bolts from both sides of the aisle,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) said before voting in favor of the both resolutions.
“Katie, bar the door,” Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) remarked when asked whether the ethics resolutions would ignite more open warfare. But he added that he believed the ethics process has failed to work, and that GOP leaders needed to press Democrats about an ethics committee probe into the matter.
Another member who voted for both resolutions but was fearful about openly criticizing his leadership warned that the parties’ leaders “are playing a dangerous game.”
“You’re always walking a fine line on the ethics front especially because there will be more indictments [of members],” said the lawmaker. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio), a former ethics committee member who voted against both measures and spoke out against them on the House floor, also said several other lawmakers told him they felt pressured to vote for the resolutions because of the politically charged ethics environment. LaTourette said the resolutions contributed to a “dumbing-down” of the House, and he argued that the ethics panel alone should make the difficult decisions about whether to investigate colleagues.
During a heated moment Tuesday night, as Hoyer was defending his resolution on the floor and arguing that the scandals involving Jack Abramoff and former Reps. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.), Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Tom DeLay (R-Texas) had contributed to a negative public perception of Congress, one House Republican shouted out: “Why did you table Murtha then?”
The lawmaker was referring to a largely partisan vote to kill a measure last month that would have admonished Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) for allegedly threatening Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) over an earmark fight.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), said he believed the House should operate under an innocent-until-proven-guilty policy when it considers stripping committee assignments and other punitive measures for colleagues under investigation.
Jefferson was forced off the Ways and Means panel last year after the FBI raided his congressional office, and on Tuesday he announced he was stepping down from the Small Business Committee. The Democratic Caucus awarded Jefferson a seat on the Homeland Security panel earlier this year but never moved that assignment to the floor for approval after Republicans pledged to challenge it.
Thompson supported the Democratic resolution that would trigger an ethics panel probe if a member is indicted, while he opposed the Republican language calling on the ethics committee to review the Jefferson matter. But Thompson refused to answer whether he truly believed an indictment should trigger an ethics committee investigation — or whether his vote was in support of the Democrats’ response to the GOP’s bill focusing on Jefferson.
Thompson was one of 13 members of the CBC who either voted against the GOP Jefferson-focused resolution or voted present. Three other CBC members, including Jefferson, didn’t vote on the resolution.
Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) whose house was raided by the FBI, voted against both resolutions, while Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who regularly bucks his own leadership and has close ties to Abramoff, voted against the GOP resolution but for the Democratic version. Murtha did not vote on either resolution.
Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Boehner have been walking an ethics tightrope since the start of the session, and the Justice Department’s public integrity unit has continued its investigations of several lawmakers. And both new leaders have stumbled along the way.
Pelosi pledged to run the most ethical House in history, but Democrats were battered by Republican charges of hypocrisy when they failed to reauthorize the ethics investigation against Jefferson this year. Ethics committee Chairwoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) Tuesday named a pool of Democratic members to form an investigative subcommittee on the Jefferson case, but the matter had been dormant for six months.
Boehner, meanwhile, faced criticism even in the conservative blogosphere for his decision last month to name Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) to replace Doolittle on the powerful Appropriations panel. Doolittle stepped down from the panel after the FBI searched his house in its investigation into ties he and his wife had with Abramoff. Calvert has faced scrutiny over land deals and their proximity to earmarks, and several GOP lawmakers openly opposed his selection to the committee.
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