House Deal Paves Way for DeLay Probe

Boston Globe

By Susan Milligan
Globe Staff

House Republicans, acceding to heavy political pressure, agreed yesterday to a change in the rules that clears the way for an investigation of embattled House majority leader Tom DeLay.

“We need to move forward. We need to get this behind us,” said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, explaining the about-face in House policy on investigating lawmakers. Following Hastert’s announcement, the full House approved the move 406-20 last night.

DeLay, under fire for allegations he may have violated House rules by taking foreign trips paid for by lobbyists, said yesterday afternoon he was pleased the stalemated Ethics Committee could get back to work. “I hope for a fair process that will give me the opportunity to set the record straight in an appropriate forum,” the influential Texas Republican said.

The House action last night reinstated earlier rules that permit an investigation of a House member even if the bipartisan Committee on Standards and Official Conduct, commonly known as the Ethics Committee, is deadlocked on a conduct question before them—a likely scenario because the 10-member panel is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

In January, House Republicans voted to change the rules, requiring a majority vote on the committee before an investigation could continue, allowing either party to stop an inquiry into the conduct of a fellow party member and effectively protecting DeLay. The decision to change the rules back is a retreat by the Republicans, who have used House procedures to control the legislative agenda.

GOP lawmakers said they were hearing complaints from constituents questioning Republicans’ commitment to ethics, and said the matter was a distraction from the party’s legislative accomplishments.

“Tom may not have broken the law, but he’s pushing the ethics to the limit and beyond. The ethics laws should apply to both sides of the aisle,” said Representative Christopher Shays, a moderate Connecticut Republican who has publicly questioned whether DeLay should remain majority leader.

“It’s the reality that we have passed important legislation and no one seems to know about it because Tom is the story,” Shays said. “We have only ourselves to blame.”

House and Senate Republicans, helped by President Bush, have gotten largely what they have wanted in recent years. But the effort to protect DeLay, one of the GOP’s most powerful legislators, from ethics investigations—combined with Republican senators’ threats to kill the filibuster for judicial nominees and party conservatives’ public rebukes of unsympathetic judges—has spurred a rebellion by Democrats.

“They are overreaching,” said Representative Louise Slaughter, Democrat of New York and ranking minority member of the House Rules Committee. “It’s an abuse of power.”

The full Ethics Committee is now free, if a member files a complaint, to launch an official investigation of DeLay, whom the panel chastised three times last year. DeLay was admonished for calling a federal agency to interfere with a Texas redistricting fight, golfing with energy executives while energy legislation was under consideration, and offering to support the congressional candidacy of House Republican Nick Smith’s son if Smith supported the 2003 Medicare bill. Smith voted no anyway, but the Medicare bill passed.

While members of the secretive panel refused to even discuss the possibility of an investigation, DeLay himself indicated he welcomed a review; yesterday, he said he plans to voluntarily give the committee his travel-related documents and will ask for clarification of House travel policy.

Hastert also suggested he expected the panel will look into DeLay’s case. He said the Ethics Committee needed to be able to do its work because an another Republican lawmaker Hastert did not name was under fire, and “right now, he can’t clear his name.”

When the ethics committee rules changed, House Democrats shut down the committee in protest; since then, Republicans have been anxious to get the committee to work. “The House needs a functioning Ethics Committee, and it’s the Republicans who’ve been trying to make that happen,” DeLay said.

But the action also amounts to a stumble in the Republicans’ efforts to marginalize the minority Democrats in Washington.

With the unusual advantage of controlling the White House and both the House and Senate, Republicans have used their influence and sheer political muscle to accomplish much of their legislative agenda, including massive tax cuts and new restrictions in the bankruptcy law. But their ongoing efforts to change rules and further tighten their control of Congress have recently run into trouble.

Earlier this year, House Republicans were forced to abandon a rules change that would have allowed DeLay to remain a House leader if an ongoing federal investigation in Texas leads to his indictment. GOP senators face public opposition in their efforts to kill the filibuster for judicial nominees, the so-called “nuclear option” that would strip the Democratic minority of one of its last few tools of resistance.

But political analysts and Democrats said the Republicans may have simply gone too far to get their way—changing rules and slamming judges who rule against their interests.

“Republicans have kind of fallen into a trap. It’s hubris,” said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political analyst and editor of the Rothenberg Political Report. “The Republicans look like a majority party right now that’s a little too full of itself, and thinks it’s immune from public criticism. They’re running the risk of creating a backlash.”

Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, said the GOP’s problems seemed to accelerate after Republicans got deeply involved in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who recently died after a long fight between her husband and parents over whether to have her feeding tube removed. Republicans in Congress, invoking their commitment to the “culture of life,” issued subpoenas to Schiavo and others in a last-ditch effort to thwart a court order that the tube be removed.

“They are fanatics with a very extreme agenda, and they will accept no restrictions on how to seek it,” Frank said. “People who think they are doing the work of the Lord are sometimes less willing to accept earthly constraints.”

Michael Carvin, a Washington lawyer who worked to advance the nominations of previous conservative judges, said there was some discussion about holding off on the decision to try to eliminate the Senate judicial filibuster until there is a Supreme Court nomination, since a Democratic filibuster of such a nomination might engender more public outrage.

But the Republicans cannot agree to a compromise that does not eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees, he said. “Now, it’s an issue of leadership for both the Senate majority leader”—Bill Frist of Tennessee—“and the president,” Carvin said. “It’s a manhood issue.”