Houston Democrats

In the editorial they detail how the Republican leadership rammed the rules changes through the House with very little consultation among the members to make the Ethics Committe incapable of fulfilling its role.

Here are the highlights

• There cannot be a credible ethics process without genuine bipartisanship, yet these changes were made without consulting the House minority and were passed on a straight party-line vote.

"If the ethics process is dominated by the majority party -- whichever party that might be -- it will have no credibility. It will almost certainly degenerate into a tool of partisan warfare and become a farce."

"[I]n fact no one on the ethics committee was consulted. It's not clear who was consulted or whether the meanings and implications of the changes were fully understood. The text was publicly released only a few hours before the vote on the House floor, and the explanatory material accompanying the changes was terse and misleading."

• These changes will, at a minimum, seriously undermine the ability of the ethics committee to consider and act on complaints.

The 45 day limit on considering a complaint before it is dismissed will make the committee even more partisan.

An ethics complaint should be considered based on its merits, not subject to an automatic dismissal within a set time.

How Mollohan's and Heffley's Bill Proposes to Restore Order

- Repeal the 45 day limit on ethics investigations.
- The bill will keep the new “due process” rights for House members, but will remove a member’s right to request an immediate trial in order to allow the committee to sufficiently investigate the alleged violation.
- Repeal the "right-to-counsel" provision that makes it likely only one lawyer would represent the member under investigation and all the witnesses. Such a situation could result in the coordination of testimony and undermine the ability of the committee to discover pertinent facts about an alleged ethics violation.

At least there are some reasonable House members on Capitol Hill, but we certainly need more of them.

Read "Get Your Congressional Representative on the Record Supporting Ethics" to find out more about Mollohan's and Heffley's bill to restore power to the Ethics Committee's and to take action by calling your representative to discover where they stand on ethics.