Mar 4, 2008 -- The Hill: Pelosi plots ethics course
By: By Mike Soraghan and Susan Crabtree

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) worked to salvage plans for an independent ethics office Monday, seeking to win over a Democratic Caucus that has shown itself to be cool to the idea of more scrutiny of members' activities.

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), the author of the proposal, floated a batch of fixes in response to the many complaints that stalled the measure last week, while Pelosi announced that she plans another vote "soon." Capuano said "every indication" points to a vote Thursday.

The ethics vote has emerged as a test of Pelosi's ability to get her caucus to swallow increased ethics enforcement in the wake of the GOP scandals that helped propel Democrats into office. But there are signs that her push for reform, which also includes last year's lobbying overhaul and increased scrutiny of earmarks, has instead provoked a backlash.

Even as she pressed for a vote last week, formal vote tallies indicated that roughly half her caucus was uncommitted or undecided on the legislation, raising suspicion in some Democratic quarters that Pelosi was pushing the bill to the floor expecting that members would be afraid to oppose it publicly.

Other aides suggested that Pelosi, faced with widespread dissent, pushed forward to force Republicans to release their ethics plan, which they'd kept close to the vest.

That theory was bolstered Monday when Pelosi announced her plan to ship the Republican proposal back to a task force for more work while preparing the Democratic proposal for a vote.

Pelosi's efforts to save the ethics bill follow a stunning uprising last week at the House Rules Committee, where Pelosi's handpicked allies lambasted it publicly. The proposal would allow outside ethics complaints against members of Congress to be screened by an independent ethics office.

The proposal, pieced together by a task force led by Capuano, was released late last year amid partisan recriminations and little if any Republican support.

House leaders pulled it before a Rules panel vote, saying they wanted time to review the Republican proposal. It would ditch the idea of an independent ethics office, and instead overhaul the existing ethics committee by adding former members of Congress to its membership.

But in a letter to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) sent Friday night, Pelosi indicated she wanted to study the GOP plan separately and not incorporate it into the bill. She proposed sending the Republican plan back to the ethics task force led by Capuano and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas).

She also suggested an ethics summit of sorts between herself, Boehner and the top Democrat and Republican on the evenly divided ethics committee.

Republicans said it made no sense to study their proposal separately from Capuano's proposal, because they view them as mutually exclusive. That indicates Republicans will continue to push for their alternative when Democrats bring their plan up for a vote.

"They are trying to split a baby that can't be split," said a GOP aide.

But, given the lack of support in her own caucus, Pelosi has bigger problems than opposition from Republicans.

Aides say there was growing dissatisfaction among members on the various ethics rules that have passed since Democrats took power. Members felt they were surprised by some elements of the rules, such as term limits for chairmen. They feel pressed by new requirements on earmarks, and they weren't prepared to go along with a new ethics plan that allows for frivolous political charges to be made.

Others speculated that Pelosi went forward with a vote because the anniversary of her call for an independent entity is looming, or that Capuano, who has not been shy about publicly stating how eager he is for his task to be completed, wanted a resolution.

Pelosi went forward, a Democratic aide said, because she felt it was time to settle the issue.

"The Speaker felt strongly that this was the product of long negotiations that took a year and were bipartisan," the aide said. "She felt this is critical to her commitment to increasing openness and transparency in Congress."

Calling the process "bipartisan" irritates Republicans because the Republicans on the task force refused to join Capuano in his recommendations.

On Monday, Capuano sought to assuage concerns on both sides of the aisle by signing off on several changes to the proposal. He circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter touting several amendments to the proposal for an independent ethics body that he said would make it "impossible to initiate a partisan witch-hunt." The amendments will be offered during the Rules Committee meeting planned for Wednesday.

Capuano noted that the two watchdog groups that supported his previous proposal, Common Cause and U.S. PIRG, are backing the changes, as are longtime congressional observers Norm Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann at the Brookings Institution.

Common Cause and U.S. PIRG are expected to urge House members to support the stalled proposal Tuesday in a press call with Capuano.

Several other prominent watchdogs, such as the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, have openly lobbied against the original proposal, arguing that it was too weak.

Capuano wants to change the current plan so that at least one member of the office's governing board from each party would have to sign off on a complaint before it could be forwarded to the full ethics committee. Under the original plan, two members could refer a complaint even if they were from the same party.

"The proposal will be amended so that reviews can be initiated only pursuant to a bipartisan request," Capuano wrote. "Members are protected, but so is the integrity of the process."

Republicans said that Capuano's changes mean that the governing board of the ethics office will be susceptible to the same partisan gridlock that has often paralyzed the ethics committee.

In an interview, Capuano acknowledged that partisan stalemates over board appointments are possible if the amendment passes.

"It is a risk that will be run with these amendments," he said.

Ethics committee deadlocks have occurred several times in recent years. In 2005, for example, the panel was locked in a partisan stalemate over whether Rep. Doc Hastings's (R-Wash.) chief of staff should become the panel's staff director, when the committee was investigating then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

DeLay accused Democrats of deliberately stalling the probe in order to drag it into the midterm elections. Democrats argued that Hastings had shown ineffectual leadership and had too many conflicts of interest to name his own top staffer to the committee.

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Changes to the Democrats' plan for an independent ethics office include:

• Two board members, one Republican and one Democrat, can forward ethics complaints to the ethics panel for review. The original proposal would have allowed any two members of the panel to recommend an ethics committee investigation.
• Appointments to the board must be approved by the Speaker and minority leader jointly, with no time limits for avoiding a partisan deadlock. The original proposal would have allowed partisan appointments if the two leaders could not agree after 90 days.
• An initial review by the office would be terminated unless three members of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) vote to advance it. The original language said that only a vote of four OCE members could terminate a review before it advances to the second phase.
• A flurry of smaller tweaks would clarify language aimed at preventing inappropriate communications between House members and OCE board members and staff and prevent the board members or staff from leaking and from seeking federal elective office for three years, among other things.