Ethics committee rules changes designed to protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay from investigation were reversed by the Republican-controlled House on Wednesday.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who ordered a vote on reversal of the rules changes, described the retreat as an effort to come to an agreement with Democrats to reopen the ethics committee.
The real reason, however, was that the Republican leadership understood that it needed to repair its public image heavily damaged by the DeLay scandals and the public’s understanding that the Party adopted new rules to prevent a probe into DeLay’s dealings.
The rules changes were ordered in the fall of 2004 after the ethics committee rebuked DeLay unanimously for the third time. DeLay was admonished for threatening a Republican member with retribution if he did not support the Republican Party leadership’s position on Bush’s Medicare bill.
The ethics committee previously rebuked DeLay for abusing his position to use federal resources in a state electoral dispute and for allowing the appearance of influence peddling and solicitation of bribes.
The consequence of the reversal is the ethics committee will be able to investigate and publicize its findings about DeLay’s relationships with shady lobbyists, acceptance of all-expenses-paid trips in exchange for favorable consideration of pending congressional business, and new allegations of improperly soliciting campaign donations.
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The reversal is the clearest signal that the Republican Party leadership may be giving DeLay up in the hopes that it can avoid an electoral backlash in the 2006 election. The Party has been moving towards distancing itself from DeLay for some time.
In recent weeks, some GOP members publicly called on DeLay to make a clean breast of his dealings; others called on him to temporarily step down. Others described the ethics rules changes as creating a credibility problem for the ethics review process.
More recently, donations to DeLay’s once robust legal defense fund have dried to a trickle.
In legislative business, Party discipline, a major responsibility of a majority leader, on key issues like budget cuts and Social Security privatization has splintered. Some 44 Republicans signed a letter in March opposing Bush’s planned cuts into Medicaid spending. Defections on issues like cuts in farm subsidies and other projects also occurred.
DeLay’s public relations tour with President Bush was described as a show of support for the beleaguered House Majority Leader, but DeLay’s isolation and the pressure on him was revealed more honestly when he snapped at reporters on Capitol Hill earlier this week.
As reporters insisted on asking DeLay about new revelations of possible ethics violations, DeLay snapped, "You guys better get out of my way. Where’s security?"
According to the Houston Chronicle, Wednesday’s action is the Republicans’ second reversal on ethics issues related to DeLay this year. In January, DeLay convinced the leaders of his Party to accept a rules change that would have allowed him to keep his leadership position if indicted by a Texas grand jury currently investigating DeLay’s role in soliciting corporate donations to a political action committee he controls in exchange for favorable consideration of legislation.
The Republicans backed away from that position only after public pressure prompted reconsideration.
--Leo Walsh can be reached at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.
