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An Exercise In Unaccountability
December 11, 2006
Exit polls from this past midterm election revealed that voters saw corruption and ethics in government as the issues most important to their vote. For many voters, this fall's scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-FL) predatory behavior with young House pages—and just as importantly, the House leadership's cover-up of Foley's actions—served as a stark metaphor for a Congress that had lost its moral compass. Then-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) charged a four-person House ethics subcommittee, headed by Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), with looking into the “conduct of House members, officers and staff related to information concerning improper conduct involving members and current and former pages.” Last Friday, the ethics panel reported that, while conservative lawmakers and aides “failed for a decade to protect male pages from sexual come-ons by Foley,” they broke no rules and should not be punished. The New York Times called the report “a 91-page exercise in cowardice.”
- The final ethics report is a toothless disappointment. No sanctions or reprimands were issued in the 91-page report that “harshly criticized Hastert.” While the report found evidence that he was told of the problem months before he acknowledged learning of Foley's questionable emails to a former Louisiana page, the ethics committee chose the easy way out. The report warned, “The failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct involving a Member and House page is not merely the exercise of poor judgment; it is a present danger to House pages and to the integrity of the institution of the House.” But despite being given an opportunity to act against this current threat, the ethics committee showed a “disconcerting unwillingness” to respond.
- With the exit of Foley, there is still house cleaning to be done. Mark Foley is now retired from Congress. Hastert, Boehner, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), and the other members who became aware of Foley's conduct have been stripped of their majority power. But Congress is still not yet entirely clean of its ethical troubles. On Saturday, Louisiana voters chose to send Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) back to Congress for a ninth term, despite the fact that he is currently under a federal investigation for bribery. During a search of Jefferson's home this summer, the FBI found $90,000 in cash in his freezer, “concealed in $10,000 increments inside various frozen food containers and wrapped in aluminum foil.” The federal corruption probe, which became public on March 15, 2005, continues, and the congressman has all but said he “expects an indictment.”
- A strong ethics bill is needed to keep Congress in check. Recognizing there is much work to be done, Pelosi—who has promised to “drain the swamp” of corruption—has laid out an agenda to clean up Congress, “starting with an immediate ban on gifts, meals and travel paid for by lobbyists.” The ethics debate will be the first item on the “100 hours” agenda when Congress convenes on Jan. 4. Pelosi's agenda includes a broad range of proposals to ban all House-Senate conference committees from meeting in private; it puts an end to anonymous “earmarks,” with which members secretly fund their pet projects; it doubles the amount of time ex-lawmakers must wait before they can lobby Congress; and it returns to “pay-as-you-go” budget rules that would force members to suggest a way to pay for any new spending before it could be approved. These rules changes are a good first step towards cleaning up the mess that was the 109th Congress, but they must be enforced to have any real effect.
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