From
Post's Mike Allen:
House Ethics Panel in Gridlock
Democrats Refuse to Participate Under New GOP Rules
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A02
The House, facing new controversy about the travel of Majority Leader Tom DeLay and other lawmakers, was left last night with no mechanism for investigating improper behavior by its members when Democrats shut down the ethics committee by refusing to accept Republican rules changes that restrict the panel's power.
Democrats said they do not plan to allow the ethics committee to organize until Republicans repeal a series of rule changes they pushed through in January, making it more difficult to initiate an investigation unless at least one Republican member supports the probe.
The committee met in secret for 2 1/2 hours. It was the first meeting since House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) replaced the chairman and two other members with lawmakers more loyal to the leadership. "These rules undermine the ability of the committee to do its job," Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), the panel's top Democrat, said in an interview after a 5 to 5 vote that stalemated action. "An ethics committee has to do a good job if it's going to do any job at all."
Everyone should support Mollohan's efforts to reverse partisan changes to ethics rules forced on the House at the start of the 109th Congress that would essentially shut down the ethics process.
The GOP leadership
changed the ethics rules despite concerns from members from their own party -
former Ethics Committee Chairman Joel Hefley (R-CO), who specifically stated that ethics reform "must be bipartisan and this is not bipartisan."
If the current leadership in the House is serious about enacting reforms to the House ethics process, they must do so in a bipartisan legislative manner, not push it through leadership as part of a rules package. This is why we are calling the Congess to adopt Mollohan's resolution that will rescind the ethics rules changes, including the most damaging one that effectively dismisses a complaint in the event of a deadlock within the ethics committee. A committee divided equally between Democrats and Republicans. This is important because if the change requiring that at least one member of the Ethics Committee must break rank with his or her political party in order for an investigation to begin, it is highly doubtful that a single ethics complaint will ever be investigated.
Given what has transpired this week, the Congress must act fast. The Ethics Committee must investigate. But it also needs in place ethics rules that allow it do its job. So
keep calling the congressional offices of the Republican leadership. The Republicans control the House and as the party in majority it falls to them to roll back these unacceptable changs to ethics rules.
