Ethics Probes May Roll Again

In the seven years since ethics charges helped destroy the political career of Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, lawmakers have shied away from initiating such investigations and unleashing the political venom they produce.

Now, that carefully observed detente is in danger of collapsing as the 2004 election campaign heats up. Democrats promise to make the ethical conduct of the GOP-controlled Hill a campaign issue, and Republicans warn they will return the fire.

For some, the end of a truce that they believe has done little more than to ensure ethical lapses go largely unpunished cannot come too quickly.

“There is an utterly paralyzed ethics system” on Capitol Hill, said Mark Glaze, a lawyer and public affairs director of the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group that advocates tough campaign finance laws.

Questions about how well Congress polices itself have arisen in the aftermath of allegations by Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) that Republicans had promised to pour cash into his son’s congressional campaign if he switched a crucial November Medicare vote.

Smith later said that no member of Congress had threatened him or tried to bribe him and that no specific amount of money was promised.

But Democrats didn’t buy his denials, and minority whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) threatened to file a formal complaint with the House ethics committee.

“You’re sort of seeing the first indication of this agreement [between Democrats and Republicans] crumbling because of the Nick Smith case,” said Frank Clemente, director of Congress Watch, a division of the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen.

“The Smith case is particularly egregious because the guy is bringing the allegations against his own party.”

In a closed hearing today, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is expected to consider Smith’s allegations that Republicans tried to bribe him to vote for the Medicare prescription drug bill. It is illegal to offer a member of Congress money in return for his or her vote.

At the time, Smith told congressional colleagues and interviewers that unnamed Republicans had pressured him to drop his opposition and vote for the bill, which was in danger of defeat. Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo (R-Colo.) has said Smith told him he was promised donations of “upwards of $100,000” for his son’s congressional campaign in return for a “yes” vote.

Smith declined requests for an interview.

As House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) held the vote open for nearly three hours, Smith told interviewers, Republicans threatened that his son would never make it to Congress if he voted “no.” Brad Smith is in a five-way race for the Republican nomination to replace his father, who is retiring.

The bill passed, 220 to 215, with Smith voting against it.

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), chairman of the ethics committee, initially said he did not plan to investigate the allegations.

But last week he announced that the committee had opened an informal inquiry in December into Smith’s statements.

Democrats backed off their threats to file a formal complaint.

Hefley could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Left open is the larger question of whether the truce can -- or should -- hold, and whether it has served to preserve the last remnants of civility on the Hill or merely leaves members of Congress “to play fast and loose with the rules,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest group in Washington.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Hoyer said he thought the truce had been misinterpreted as being a ban on any ethics investigations initiated by lawmakers.

“I have said that if the truce is interpreted to mean that we are not going to raise ethical concerns with reference to conduct of the people’s business, then I think the truce is wrong,” Hoyer said.

“If we keep talking about this truce as if it meant that we didn’t raise ethical concerns, then the American public, watchdog groups, the press would think to themselves: ‘How nice a deal [for Congress]. Anything goes, and we are not looking into it.’ ” Such a perception, Hoyer said, “is bad for the institution. It is bad for the American public.”

Several watchdog groups say the Smith case points out the need for real reform in the way Congress polices itself.

“If the American people knew that there was no true ethics process in the House of Representatives as the result of a truce by Republicans and Democrats,” Fitton said, “the already high distrust for Washington would exponentially increase.”

It was the supercharged political atmosphere of the 1990s -- when Republicans controlled the House and voted to impeach President Clinton -- that led the two parties to seek protection in their informal agreement to lay off politically motivated ethics investigations, lawmakers and analysts said.

In the 1990s “the ethics committee was really used as a partisan political tool,” said Republican political consultant Dan Meyer, who was chief of staff for Gingrich (R-Ga).

“Congressman X was in a targeted district, so the other party would say, ‘Let’s file ethics charges against him.’ ”

After Gingrich’s downfall, the House leadership agreed that “the ethics committee has an important purpose,” Meyer said. “But if we’re going to just use it to throw political bombs, it is being abused.”

In 1997, Gingrich became the first speaker to be reprimanded after the ethics committee found that he had failed to seek legal advice on the propriety of using tax-deductible donations to fund two college courses he was teaching.

The disciplinary action weakened Gingrich, who resigned as speaker in November 1998 in the face of a revolt by fellow Republicans.

It was a painful end for a politician who had helped to force Texas Democrat Jim Wright from the speakership, and from Congress, in 1989 by filing ethics charges against him.

Sharon Williams, a spokeswoman for Brad Smith, said the campaign had seen no sign that Nick Smith’s confrontation with Republicans, if it occurred, had affected his son’s ability to raise money or diminished contributions from Washington.

Smith raised $100,000 in the last quarter of 2003, which was his fundraising goal, she said Tuesday.