Bush to Present Ethics Reform Package, Propose 25% Increase in Judges’ Salaries

President Bush plans to unveil a package of proposed ethics reforms today along with a call for a roughly 25% increase in the salaries of federal judges, Administration officials said Tuesday.

But Bush’s package, which largely follows the recommendations last month of a special presidential ethics commission, will sidestep any discussion of congressional pay and will drop the commission’s proposal to ban members of Congress from receiving honorariums--money for the speeches they make to special interest groups.

“We have always said that honorariums are a part of the pay equation,” said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. Because “we do not intend to deal with the congressional pay raise,” making no proposal on honorariums “makes sense,” Fitzwater said.

Can’t ‘Cram Down Throats’

Banning honorariums “is not something you can cram down their throats,” one White House aide said, adding that Bush “wants to work with them.”

Congress is reluctant even to discuss the pay raise issue after the bruising fight earlier this year that led to the defeat of a plan for a 50% increase. Banning honorariums without increasing congressional pay would reduce substantially the income of some members. Under current rules, senators may accept honorariums up to 40% of their $89,500 salary, and House members up to 30%.

The reluctance to reopen the pay issue is likely to mean tough going for Bush’s proposal to increase judicial pay. Congress generally has resisted any plans to increase the pay of other government officials without increasing its own as well.

Bush plans to argue that many judges are threatening to leave the bench because their $89,500 salary is lower than the salaries some major law firms now pay new law school graduates.

Until recently, the White House also planned to include some executive branch officials in the raise proposal, contending that many federal agencies are having difficulty competing with private firms for top-level people in specialized fields. However, that idea was shelved for now as politically unsalable without a congressional hike.

Although the new package fulfills a Bush campaign promise to propose reforms in federal ethics laws, it makes changes mostly at the margins of current rules rather than fully overhauling them. When the ethics commission issued its report last month, critics such as Fred Wertheimer, president of the citizens lobby Common Cause, called the package “inadequate.” Removing the honorariums ban further scales back the scope of the effort.

Moreover, the plan, much of which will require legislation before it can take effect, may be weakened still more before Congress passes it.

Perhaps the most significant change, and one likely to encounter considerable opposition among legislators, is a proposal to require members of Congress and their aides to observe a one-year “cooling off” period after leaving government before taking jobs as lobbyists.

Similar restrictions have long governed employees of the executive branch and Congress last fall agreed to impose some post-employment restrictions on its own members as part of an overall ethics bill vetoed by former President Ronald Reagan. But many members of Congress opposed the restrictions at the time.

The idea of restricting the future employment of congressional staff has generated opposition from some members of Congress, who argue that their ability to hire staff would be badly hurt by restricting the future job prospects of the aides. Congressional aides should not have to abide by the same restrictions that apply to high-level executive branch employees, these members of Congress argue, noting that their aides generally are younger and paid considerably less than staff of the executive branch and often serve for only a few years before moving into private-sector jobs.

Close ‘Deaver Loophole’

Bush also plans to issue an order that would close the so-called “Deaver loophole” in the ethics law, which bars top officials from lobbying their old colleagues for a year after leaving office.

Under a Reagan Administration policy recognizing a number of internal divisions in the White House, Michael K. Deaver, Reagan’s longtime personal aide, argued that he was barred only from lobbying former colleagues in the immediate Office of the President, not employees of other White House operations such as the Office of Management and Budget. Although Deaver was successful in making that argument, he was later convicted of lying to a grand jury that investigated his activities.