Ethics: News Archives: 2005October 4, 2005 -- House Must Act on Pending Ethics Controversies The Congressional Ethics Coalition, an ideologically diverse coalition of government watchdog groups, sent a letter on October 4, 2005 to the leaders of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct urging them to take prompt action on a long series of pending ethics controversies.
According to the letter, "The recent criminal indictments of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) are only the latest in a series of instances that have raised serious questions about the conduct of members of Congress. Serious allegations of improper activities by a number of members, combined with the widely reported congressional travel controversy, have served to raise public concerns about whether members are acting without regard to basic standards of ethical behavior."
To read the full letter, click here.
May 5, 2005 -- Legal Center Urges Senate to Support "Pay to Play" Laws On May 5, 2005 the Campaign Legal Center sent a letter to every member of the U.S. Senate urging their support for the Government Contracting Reform Amendment to the Safe-TEA/TEA-LU Highway bill, which protects the right of states to enact and enforce "pay to play" laws.
The amendment is sponsored by Senators Lautenberg and Corzine and would amend the transportation legislation to not prohibit "a state from enacting a law or issuing an order that limits the amount that an individual that is a party to a contract with a State agency under this section may contribute to a political campaign."
The Legal Center 's letter notes that "for more than 50 years, federal law has prohibited political contributions to federal candidates from federal government contractors. In recent years, state and local governments around the nation have followed Congress ' lead by enacting similar "pay to play" laws to protect the integrity of the procurement process."
"The right of states to enact and enforce "pay to play" laws has recently come under threat by the Federal Highway Administration affecting state laws in Kentucky, Ohio, New Jersey, South Carolina, and West Virginia. Furthermore, the Highway Administration action curtails the rights of others states around the nation to enact their own "pay to play" laws."
Click here to read the full text of the letter.
April 27, 2005 -- House Still Faces Major Ethics Challenges The House Republican leadership's apparent decision to reverse the most serious of the changes they imposed on the ethics rules in January is welcome, and long overdue.
As Speaker Dennis Hastert has acknowledged, the Committee has a list of pending ethics controversies, involving both Republican and Democratic members, that require the panel's attention. The Committee needs to move quickly to consider those cases, including a thorough probe of ethics allegations surrounding Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
However, while the old ethics rules provide a basic framework to allow the Committee to move forward, the House ethics oversight process still faces major challenges.
First, no ethics inquiry will be credible unless the Members conducting it are free from conflicts of interest. In the case of Rep. DeLay, two of the panel's five Republican members - Rep. Tom Cole and Rep. Lamar Smith - have contributed substantial sums to his legal defense fund. Those Members cannot participate in any probe of Mr. DeLay without fatally undermining the public credibility of both the process and the outcome. At a minimum, those Members must recuse themselves from any investigation of the Majority Leader because they have an obvious and apparent conflict of interest.
Second, the old ethics rules are themselves flawed in important ways, and require thorough reexamination. In particular, a '97 rule change forbidding citizens or outside groups from filing complaints, combined with an unwritten ethics "truce" between House Republicans and Democrats, operated until the last Congress to virtually kill ethics oversight. The ability of citizens and outside groups to file complaints must be restored, and Members must take seriously their obligation to police their own House and protect the integrity of the institution.
The recent plunge in the public's approval of Congress reflects, in significant part, the ethics problems that have been facing the House. The Members of the House must show they take ethics issues seriously in order to begin rebuilding public respect for Congress.
Campaign Legal Center
Center for Responsive Politics
Common Cause
Democracy 21
Public Citizen
Judicial Watch
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April 6, 2005 -- Congressional Ethics Coalition Statement on House Ethics
April 6, 2005 -- News reports today detailing questionable activities by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) underline the urgent need for House leaders to accept their responsibility to get a functioning ethics review process in place.
The panel is now completely unable to conduct business because Democrats on the panel have rightly rejected a set of rules changes, forced through by House Republican leaders and designed to undermine the Committee. Among other changes, the new rules require a majority vote of the evenly-divided Committee to begin even a preliminary probe into possible ethical misconduct - a surefire prescription for ending real ethics investigations.
As a result of these partisan rules changes, a long list of serious ethics matters - involving both Democratic and Republican members - is languishing at the dormant Committee. In addition, the panel is unable to do even its most straightforward work, including answering members' day-to-day ethics questions.
The Ethics Committee's ranking Democrat, Alan Mollohan (D-WV), has introduced legislation to roll back these destructive rule changes. We urge the House Republican leadership to allow a vote on that legislation. And if they do not, we urge the members to use all the tools at their disposal, including the discharge petition, to get a public vote on the measure. Members have a responsibility to declare their support for, or opposition to, an Ethics Committee worthy of the name.
(The Center for Responsive Politics does not endorse legislation, and therefore abstains from this letter.)
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March 15, 2005 -- Ethics Coalition Statement Urging House Leaders to Resolve Unprecedented Ethics Crisis A series of steps taken by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and other House Republican leaders to weaken the ethics oversight process reached their logical conclusion late last week: the Ethics Committee effectively ceased to exist.
Democrats on the panel, led by Ranking Democrat Alan Mollohan (D-WV), rightly refused to accept a series of recent House rules changes that would severely undermine the Committee's ability to pursue ethics violators. The Committee's members were therefore unable to agree on a set of operating rules, and as a result, the panel is unable to conduct any business whatsoever.
Further, under House Rule 11, Section 2(a)(2), any House committee that is unable to agree on operating rules within thirty days of the date on which the panel's members are appointed is considered officially "defunct."
Click here to read the entire statment of the Congressional Ethics Coaltion.
Click here for the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's statment.
Click here for Common Cause's statement.
Click here for Democracy 21's statement.
Click here for Public Citizen's statement.
March 2, 2005 -- Ethics Coalition Applauds Proposal to Strengthen Ethics Rules We applaud Rep. Alan Mollohan's measure to roll back some of the House Republican leadership's recent rules changes, which have fundamentally undermined the ethics enforcement process in the House.
Rep. Mollohan's resolution would rightly reverse a new rule under which ethics complaints are automatically dismissed if the Ethics Committee does not take any action on them within 45 days. The Mollohan measure would also preserve the right of the Ethics Committee to resolve ethics matters by formal letter, rather than effectively having to choose between outright dismissal and a formal investigation. Finally, the resolution would preserve the right of the Committee to require that respondents and witnesses in panel proceedings retain an attorney who is not representing another person in the same case - an important tool to prevent participants in an investigation from coordinating their testimony.
Click here to read the entire press release.
February 16, 2005 -- Ethics Coalition Statement on Hastings' Firing of Panel Staff The Congressional Ethics Coalition today released a statement in response to Ethics Committee Chairman Doc Hastings' decision to fire members of the ethics panel's professional staff.
Yesterday's firing by Ethics Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) of five members of the ethics panel's professional staff sends yet another unmistakable signal that the Republican leadership is on a single-minded mission to dismantle the House ethics oversight process.
Over the course of the last Congress, the Committee properly - and unanimously - admonished House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on three separate occasions for ethical impropriety. The Republican leadership has clearly decided it has no intention of allowing the Committee to continue to enforce the ethics rules. It has instead embarked on a multi-track effort to bring ethics enforcement to a standstill.
Click here to read the entire statement.
January 4, 2005 -- Ethics Coalition Release: House Still Poised to Cripple Ethics Process Last night, the House Republican conference rejected an attempt to gut the chamber's standard of ethical conduct for members. In addition, the conference reversed a recent decision designed to allow Majority Leader Tom DeLay to retain his leadership position in the event he is indicted by a Texas grand jury. We applaud those decisions.
Unfortunately, in the calm after the storm, the House remains poised to take two other steps that would effectively cripple enforcement of ethics rules.
Click here to read the entire press release.
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