Many Question Fairness of Current Standards of Conduct : Wright Affair Stirs Debate on Reform of House Rules

No matter how the ethics charges against Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) are eventually resolved, the controversy surrounding his case already has set off a clamor among House members for reform of the rules by which they will be judged in the future.

Even Wright himself, who has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, acknowledged last week that his experience may point up weaknesses in the current standards of conduct for House members.

“The rules of the House may need changes,” he said.

Need for Reform

For many House members, the Wright affair has simply demonstrated a need for reform that was already apparent to them as a result of the increased public attention to government ethics, a dramatic growth in the sums of money that members accept from special interests and the outmoded nature of some rules, such as those governing the activity of working spouses.

“I think right now there is a sense of the necessity to ensure higher standards in all three branches of government,” said Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), a former member of the House Ethics Committee. “We have been approaching this newer and tougher standard for some time now.”

The chorus demanding reform grew especially loud last week when many House members learned for the first time exactly what charges were being brought against Wright as a result of a 10-month, $1.5-million investigation by the Ethics Committee. Some members confessed privately that their own family finances might not hold up under the same intense scrutiny to which the affairs of Wright and his wife, Betty, have been subjected.

“I hear more and more members saying, ‘I’d hate to see them spend $1.5 million investigating me,’ ” political scientist Norman Ornstein said. “There are plenty of members who would not want to see their wife’s activity investigated.”

Media Spotlight Feared

Heightening the fears of these House members is the unanticipated coincidence that all of them are required to file their own personal financial disclosure reports for 1988 on May 15, just as the final phase of the Wright inquiry is coming to a head. The news media are expected to pay more attention than usual to these reports as an outgrowth of the Wright affair.

Reforms are likely to come both as a result of the work of a bipartisan task force that was created by Wright last January to recommend changes in the House rules and also through ethics legislation governing all three branches of government that President Bush recommended to Congress last week.

Ironically, there is little doubt that members of Congress adhere to a much higher ethical standard now than they have at many times over the last 200 years. The history of Congress is studded with many remarkable stories of payoffs, drunkenness and sexual perversion.

In fact, the current rules governing the conduct of House members were written in 1977 in the wake of a sex scandal involving House Administration Committee Chairman Wayne Hayes (D-Ohio), who resigned after it was disclosed that he had hired at a salary of $14,000 a young blonde named Elizabeth Ray whose only job was to act as his mistress.

Originally Seen as Stringent

At the time they were written, the rules were seen as extremely stringent.

Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who chaired the commission that authored the 1977 revision, takes offense whenever anyone suggests that House rules are too weak. “These rules hit and hit hard,” said Obey, who three years later was denied the chairmanship of the House Budget Committee by the many influential enemies he made as a result of the rules revision.

Obey noted that the rules were drafted after the House had commissioned a national poll to determine what standards would meet with public opinion. “These rules were not arbitrarily conceived,” he said. “They were written after we asked our employers what they wanted them to be.”

Nevertheless, as the ethical standards have risen, so have the public expectations.

Change of Attitude

“There has been a change of attitude in the political system because there has been a change in attitude in the society,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said. “I’ve heard members of Congress say what Jim Wright is accused of doing, one, is not a breach of the technicalities of the rules and 20 years ago nobody would have tried to pin anything on him for it.”

In this new climate of intense scrutiny, many House members complain that the current rules are often too vague and their original meaning has been eroded by changes in the political climate and practices that have grown up in the last 12 years.

“Over the years, the rules have been amended to the point that they are now so complex and there are enough gray areas in them that it allows members to cross the lines without knowing it,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands). “It has created a situation where many a person finds himself charged with a violation that he never intended.”

Members of the Ethics Committee who are reviewing Wright’s case agree that there are too many ambiguities in the rules. According to sources, the committee members have found it particularly difficult to agree on an interpretation of the rule that prohibits members from accepting gifts in excess of $100 from outsiders with direct interest in legislation.

Rule Violation Cited

By an 8-4 vote, the committee found that Wright may have violated this rule by seeking legislation benefiting the redevelopment of the old Ft. Worth stockyards at a time shortly after his friend, George A. Mallick Jr., a real estate tycoon, was asked by the developers to find $148 million in new private funding for the project.

For the six years preceding this deal, Wright and Mallick had been business partners in an investment company known as Mallightco--a blend of the two names--which provided more than $100,000 in salaries and benefits to Mrs. Wright. The committee concluded that Mrs. Wright’s salary and benefits--including the free use of a condominium and a Cadillac--may have constituted unlawful gifts from a person with direct interest in legislation.

Obey argues that the rule was never intended to foreclose such business relationships with hometown friends, and other members note it is common for friends back home to share a stake in the economic development of the community that they are also trying to enhance though their positions in Congress.

Firestorm of Controversy

“Many members have George Mallicks back home,” observed a House staff member in explaining why the committee’s interpretation of the rule has set off a firestorm of controversy in the House. He predicted that the rule governing gifts from people with direct legislative interests will be one of the first to be revised.

Another rule that is sure to be clarified in the wake of the Wright episode is the one designed to prevent a spouse from accepting unearned salaries from people to influence legislation. Wright has chosen to make an issue of his wife’s right to earn her own salary, taking advantage of the current sensitivity to two wage-earner families.

This rule has become increasingly important, according to Obey, because many more members of Congress now have working spouses than in 1977 when the rule was drafted.

“If we tried to pass today the rule on spouse income, we could not pass it,” he said. “I think there is more pressure today to reduce coverage for spouses because people believe it is a sexist rule.”

Although Wright asserted his wife was the first to be singled out under this rule, the income of a spouse was at issue in the 1984 Ethics Committee investigations of both then-Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) and then-Rep. George Hansen (R-Ida.). The committee ruled that Ferraro erroneously claimed her husband’s income was exempt from disclosure. Hansen was found guilty of failing to report $334,000 in loans and profits he ascribed to his wife.

End of First Phase

Many Democrats also are angry that the Wright investigation has turned into a lengthy ordeal as a result of the slow procedures of the Ethics Committee. Although the panel’s report is expected to be published Monday, that marks only the end of the first phase of the closed-door investigation. After Wright has another opportunity to defend himself against the charges, the committee then will render its judgment and perhaps recommend punishment to the full House, which will debate the matter publicly.

“It’s a very antiquated, unfair, strange process,” Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) said.

Committee members appear particularly anxious to correct one of the frequent criticisms of their procedure--that the same panel acts as both grand jury and trial jury. Sources said the 12-member panel will set up two separate subcommittees in the future, one to carry out the investigation and the other to sit in judgment of the evidence.

But committee members insist there is no way to speed up the process as long as the members have other tasks and other committees to serve to carry out on Capitol Hill.

In an effort to capitalize upon the demand for reform, Common Cause, the citizens lobby, recently enlisted 226 House members to sign a petition favoring a new rule that would prohibit the present practice, under which House members can accept an equivalent of 30% of their $89,500 annual government salary in speaking fees from special interest groups.

Likewise, Common Cause is lobbying for a system of auditing financial disclosure reports.

But House members predicted that such sweeping changes as those being sought by Common Cause were unlikely to be enacted. Most members are unwilling to forgo honorariums in the wake of their rejection of a 50% pay raise earlier this year--an action that probably has delayed any substantial pay increase for Congress for perhaps another four years.

“It’s very difficult for the average members to adjust to this new environment,” said a Democratic member who declined to be identified by name. “Some of them are unwilling to live like monks.”