Democrats Finalize New Ethics Rules
    By Jonathan E. Kaplan and Jackie Kucinich
    The Hill

    Wednesday 03 January 2007

    House Democrats hurried yesterday to put the finishing touches on ethics reforms that would ban lawmakers and staffers from accepting trips, gifts and meals from lobbyists and prevent the new majority from holding votes open to change the outcome.

    Democrats will adopt and then amend the House Rules package tomorrow to ban all travel paid for by lobbyists or organizations that employ lobbyists, require the ethics committee to pre-approve travel paid for by outside groups, enact a total gift ban, and require lawmakers to pay the market cost of flying on a corporate jet, said Democratic staffers and officials with government watchdog groups.

    And, because they feel they lost the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit vote because GOP leaders held it open for three hours, during which they flipped opponents into the "yes" column, Democrats will include a provision in the rules to prevent any sort of repetition, said aides to incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

    Democrats also will eliminate the practices of changing conference reports after members have signed them and excluding elected members from conference committees.

    Until now, Democrats have not had to propose specifics or explain how they would work in practice. The biggest challenge for the new majority has been translating political rhetoric into tightly drafted legal language without loopholes, said Democratic aides. The concern is that language could be exploited for loopholes or yield unintended consequences.

    New House rules could take eight weeks or longer to go into effect because the ethics committee (the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct) might be required to clarify and interpret issues, such as how to define a lobbyist and how a pre-approval requirement for travel would function.

    State and local government agencies and some foundations, such as AIPAC and the Aspen Institute, want to be exempted from the new rules.

    "We're interested in the basic bans on paying for travel, bans on gifts and entertainment and making sure there are no loopholes in the provisions," said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a campaign-finance watchdog group.

    Senior Democratic staffers, who returned to work on a day when the federal government was closed to mourn the death of former President Gerald Ford, planned to make the proposed rules changes public this afternoon at a press conference. Some aides who have jumped from the campaign trail into Congress have, as yet, no computers and only limited access to telephones.

    Leadership aides plan today to brief chiefs of staff and press secretaries working for rank-and-file lawmakers.

    Meanwhile, GOP Reps. Tom Price (Ga.), Eric Cantor (Va.), and Patrick McHenry (N.C.) plan to introduce a resolution next week modeled on legislation that Pelosi introduced in 2004.

    Pelosi's "Minority Bill of Rights" demanded that legislation move through the committee process before reaching the House floor and urged GOP leaders to give lawmakers 24 hours to review legislation before it is considered and voted on by subcommittees or on the House floor.

    McHenry expressed concern that excluding Republicans from the legislative process would set a bad precedent. GOP Reps. Buck McKeon (Calif.), Peter King (N.Y.) and Jim McCrery (La.) yesterday urged the Democrats who will chair their committees to conduct hearings on proposals that Democrats will consider in the first 100 legislative hours.

    Democrats justified excluding Republicans by saying that the bills had already been discussed in the 109th Congress.

    "It is a choice between leading with integrity and leading by force," McHenry said. "To say they are advocating [fairness] is ludicrous on its face by their opening hours of action."

    Democrats and political observers rejected the GOP proposal, noting that the Republican majority never considered Pelosi's legislation.

    "I think they risk being laughed out of town," said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the incoming chairwoman of the Rules Committee.

    Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, added, "I don't blame them in the slightest for picking it up and introducing it, but the chutzpah is quite remarkable."

    Some of Pelosi's proposed changes will be included in the Democratic rules package, said Stacey Bernards, a spokeswoman for Majority Leader-elect Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

    Democrats complained vociferously about the House GOP's tactics during the past four years, such as preventing Democrats from offering amendments on the House floor, excluding them from conference committees, and holding votes open for much longer than the traditional 15 minutes.

    In response to real and perceived legislative slights, Democratic candidates campaigned against a Republican "culture of corruption" and promised to tighten ethics rules, in part to put distance between lawmakers and lobbyists. Revising ethics rules may prove central to retaining their majority in the House in 2008.

    "I think the most important thing we can do to ensure their reelection is to follow through on the commitments the Democrats ... made to those voters," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program last week.

    Democratic leaders plan to pair three freshman members with more senior lawmakers to lead the debate on the House floor on Thursday and Friday. Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio), who won the seat vacated by former Rep. Bob Ney (R), will lead debate over new trip and gift rules. Ney has pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff, the convicted former GOP lobbyist.

    The other two freshman Democratic lawmakers who are to play leading roles in the debate have not been chosen, but Democratic leaders are considering Reps. Chris Carney (D-Pa.), Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said a senior Democratic aide. They each defeated a lawmaker ensnared in ethics controversies.

    In addition to revising ethics rules, the Democratic majority on Friday will debate and vote on procedural and budgetary reforms - measures to ensure that members have 24 hours to review legislation, earmark reforms and pay-as-you-go requirements - said senior Democratic aides.

    Time spent debating changes to the rules package will not count against Pelosi's 100-hour legislative blitzkrieg, set to begin the week of Jan. 8 and last approximately 10 legislative days, ending when President Bush delivers his State of the Union address on Jan. 23.