A panel of the House ethics committee is cranking up to deal with a potential crisis of trust before Congress–a job some critics say is too big for a panel they consider a “toothless tiger.”
House leaders set an investigation in motion this week to examine the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and teenage congressional pages, examining who in Congress knew Foley sent electronic messages to young men, when they knew it and whether they dealt with it properly.
Critics of the system say an outside investigator would bring more independence, and credibility, to the process.
“We strongly urged the committee to retain an outside counsel to conduct the investigation,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a non-profit organization that pushes for ethics reforms in government. “The failure to do so has seriously undermined the credibility of the committee and its investigation, and it raises serious questions about whether we’ll ever find out what happened here.”
Others say the committee should do the job itself, because members of Congress are best-qualified for the job and because lawmakers must show the public they can police themselves.
“We understand the atmosphere that we work in, and we understand the importance of the integrity of the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), a member of the subcommittee handling the Foley case. “If we run to an outside counsel, it says that we can’t do it.”
The committee has been out of the limelight since early 2005, when it served as the backdrop for a House fight over then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who has since resigned and is under indictment in a campaign finance case. Back then, Democrats on the ethics committee refused to attend the panel’s meetings to protest changes imposed by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who had replaced committee members thought to be too tough on DeLay.
This week’s developments thrust the panel into the spotlight and resurrected questions about whether its members can act impartially. Some Republicans on the committee have received campaign contributions from Hastert, whose office likely will be a significant target of its probe.
Some Democrats complained Friday about a “strategy session” conference call Biggert reportedly participated in early in the week with other House Republicans about how to deal with the political fallout.
But Biggert said the Monday conference call took place before she knew she’d be part of the subcommittee named to look into the issue, and she said the call was informational and not political. Biggert, a lawyer, said she can perform her duties like an “officer of the court,” without regard for who has given her political support.
“It helps to put yourself in a legal mode and divorce yourself from your personal views,” she said.
Sheila Krumholz, acting executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said she wonders whether the highly politicized atmosphere in Congress makes it possible to have a thorough internal review.
“We’re concerned that the committee has been such a toothless tiger over the last few years,” said Krumholz, whose center is non-profit and non-partisan. “We’re anxious, like all Americans, that this process be thorough and fair.”
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cparsons@tribune.com
