http://www.thehill.com/news/111704/delay.aspx
November 17, 2004
Rule change to shield DeLay
GOP caucus likely to end requirement that indicted leaders must step aside
By Jonathan E. Kaplan
The House GOP caucus is likely to vote today to end its rule requiring leaders to step down if indicted, thus shielding Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) in the event that criminal charges are brought against him in a highly controversial case in Texas.
The effort to change the decade-old rule is being led by Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) to head off the threat posed by what Republicans say is a Democratic political witch hunt against DeLay after his success in redistricting Texas in the GOP’s favor.
Austin’s district attorney, Ronnie Earle, has indicted two of DeLay’s closest fundraisers for their role in that effort and could indict DeLay himself.
“Congressman Bonilla’s rule change is designed to prevent political manipulation of the legislative process,” his spokeswoman, Taryn Fritz Walpole, wrote in an e-mail. “The modification preserves the original ethical intent of the rule by lessening the possibility of political exploitation and intimidation of House Leadership and Chairmanship positions.”
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told The Hill that the rule change, first reported by The Hill yesterday, “reflects a reality that [Earle’s investigation is] nothing but a political witch hunt bent on taking him to court. It’s the final phase that Democrats are coming to grips that Republicans are a permanent majority. There’s not any question it’ll pass.”
DeLay, who has been admonished by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for his role in the redistricting, has decided to “allow the members of the conference to come to their own conclusions and that he should not exert undue influence on the process,” said spokesman Stuart Roy.
In 1993, amid ethical and criminal charges pending against several senior House Democrats and Rep. Joe McDade (R-Pa.), the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Republicans stripped leaders and ranking committee members — the GOP was then in the minority — of their posts.
Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) and Majority Whip Tony Coelho (D-Calif.) previously had resigned under pressure of ethical charges. Majority Whip William Gray (D-Pa.) had been investigated by the Justice Department for improper use of his personal office. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) served 15 months in prison and two months in a halfway house and paid a $100,000 fine after pleading guilty to two counts of mail fraud in 1996.
In the 108th Congress, GOP conference rules require a leader to step aside temporarily if indicted on a felony charge that carries a prison term of two or more years. A separate rule applies to committee chairmen.
Republican aides were still hashing out the exact language of the rule change.
Bonilla’s proposal would drop the requirement that a leader step aside if indicted by a grand jury or a state prosecutor.
Republicans have used Democrats’ ethical lapses, including a check-kiting scandal at the House bank, to their political advantage. In 1987, then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) told The Washington Post: “[You] now have a House where it is more dangerous to be aggressive about honesty than it is to be mildly corrupt. … We have in Wright, [Majority Leader Tom Foley (D-Wash.)] and Coelho a third generation of Democratic leaders, the first that has never served in a minority. … You now have a situation where I think people feel almost invulnerable.”
Cantor said, however, that by inoculating DeLay in the present case the Republicans will not lose the moral high ground gained by instituting the rule in the first place.
“That line of reasoning [accepts] that exercise of the prosecutor in Texas is legitimate,” he said.
Meantime, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the incoming chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he has introduced a package of rule changes to force more fiscal discipline on the GOP caucus. He said he was not prepared to elaborate on specific changes.
Democrats, both on and off the Hill, were relishing the prospect of Republicans’ rewriting the rules that they claimed would be a mainstay of their tenure in the majority.
“It would be the height of hypocrisy for a party that came to power promising to clean house to deliberately clear the way for a corrupt and unethical member under indictment to lead the people’s House,” a Democratic leadership aide said.
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