THE RESIGNATION OF JIM WRIGHT : EXCERPTS: I Pray to God That We Will Restore the Spirit . . . in This House . . .

Here are excerpts of House Speaker Jim Wright’s statement Wednesday:

For 34 years I have had the great privilege to be a member of this institution, the people’s House, and I shall forever be grateful for that wondrous privilege. . . .

And I love this institution.

And I want to assure each of you that under no circumstances, having spent more than half of my life here, this House being my home, would I ever knowingly or intentionally do or say anything to violate its rules or detract from its standards.

Now all of us are prone to human error. . . .

Ached to Tell Story

For over a year, well, just about a year, I have ached to tell my side of the story.

That to which I have to respond keeps changing.

But today, silence is no longer tolerable; nor for the good of the House is it even desirable.

So without any rancor and without any bitterness or any hard feelings toward anybody, I thank you for indulging me as I answer to you and to the American people for my honor, my reputation and all the things I’ve tried to stand for all these years.

The past year, while the committee on standards has had these matters under advisement, I have ached for the opportunity to speak. Almost daily I besought them to let me come and answer whatever questions they had on their mind. Finally, on the 14th of September, they gave me one day in which to do that.

I gratefully went and spent the whole morning and the whole afternoon answering as candidly and freely as possibly I could any questions that anyone would ask and I believe when I left everyone was reasonably well satisfied.

Suffice to say that the five original charges that had been lodged were dropped, dismissed. In their place, however, came three additional charges. Some said 69. The 69 are merely a matter of multiple counting of the three. . . .

The three questions are these:

Did my wife Betty’s employment, at $18,000 a year for some four years, by a small investment corporation which she and I formed with friends of ours, George and Marlene Mallick, and the attendant benefits of that employment--use of an apartment when she was in Ft. Worth on company business and the use of a company-owned car--constitute merely a sham and a subterfuge and a gift from our friend Mr. Mallick? Was Betty’s employment and those things related to it a gift?

You’ve read in papers the suggestion made by committee counsel that I may have received up to $145,000 in gifts from my friend Mr. Mallick. Half of it, $72,000, was Betty’s income, Betty’s salary. The other half involved the use of a car and the use of an apartment on a per diem basis. . . .

First question I should like to, I suppose you might be asking, why was Betty working for the corporation? Why did we put her to work at $18,000 a year?

Wife Did Work

Betty alone among all of us had the time and the opportunity, and the experience and the desire to give effort and energy to exploring and promoting investment opportunities. She did indeed perform work, and it paid off for the little corporation. . . .

She advised as to when was a good time to sell, when was a good time to buy and the corporation made some money on those regional stocks--not a lot of money by some people’s standards. But we made some money. Betty paid for her salary several times over. . . .

I want to include for printing in the record affidavits from several business people who know from their personal experience and attest to the work that Betty did in this regard. . . .

And here’s the irony. The supreme irony.

In 1976, when I was elected majority leader, Betty voluntarily left her job as a professional staff person on the committee so as to avoid any criticism of this institution or of her husband on the ground that we were both on the public payroll. . . .

In addition to her salary as a gift, outside counsel contends in summing up $145,000 (inaudible) that Betty had the use of a company car. That is true, she did. For the first three years, it was used largely by Mr. and Mrs. Mallick.

It wasn’t Mr. Mallick’s car. It was the company car. The company bought and paid for it. We owned half of it. The next four years Betty had most of the use of it.

Now I’ve done what I can to resolve any doubt. . . . I bought and paid for that car out of my personal funds. The trustee of my bank trust, at my instruction, paid the corporation full book value for the car on the day Betty first started driving it on company business, through the whole time she had it in her possession, plus interest. The interest amounted to about $9,000.

What more can I do. Does that make it right?

Now concerning the apartment, Betty and I . . . didn’t think there was anything wrong with paying a per diem rate. . . .

Nevertheless, last year I said to George Mallick, I said, I want to buy the apartment, George, I’ll pay you for it. I did. I paid the amount suggested and appraised by two real estate persons in Ft. Worth, $58,000. Now if anybody thinks that’s too low a price I’ll sell it to you today for $58,000. . . .

The second alleged violation . . . further assumes that George Mallick, our friend and business partner, had a direct interest in influencing legislation, which would make it illegal for us to accept gifts from him.

Now how do they arrive at that suggestion? I’ve known this man for more than 25 years. He’s been my friend, good, decent, hard-working man of Lebanese extraction.

Never once in all the years that I’ve known this man has he ever asked me to vote for or against any piece of legislation. Not once. . . .

All people have an interest of some kind in the results of legislation, don’t they? That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about whether or not they have a direct interest in trying to influence the course of legislation. . . .

Well, the people who wrote the rules don’t think George Mallick had an interest in the legislation.

David Obey was the chairman of the committee that drafted those rules. He asserts clearly, unequivocally, emphatically, unambiguously, both in an affidavit that he wrote and the report he wrote for the Washington Post that doesn’t fit George Mallick’s case. . . . Harold Sawyer, former Republican member from Michigan, who served on that committee with David Obey, says the same thing. . . .

Sale of a Book

Now the only other basic question, it’s just one that remains, in the statement of alleged violations, concerns the sale of a book, a little book now you’ll recall, “Reflections of a Public Man,” which I wrote and which was sold sometimes in bulk quantities. . . .

Now, the contention of the committee as I understand it is that this book project to publish that book on which I got $3.25 for every book that sold was a kind of a sham and a subterfuge itself and an overall scheme for me to exceed and violate the outside earnings limitation of a member of Congress.

I mean, do you think I’d do something like that?

Perhaps the book--$3.25 is what I got out of it, and I didn’t get any advance--the purpose of the book was to publish something at a small cost and get wide distribution. If monetary gain had been my primary interest, don’t you think I would have gone to one of the big Madison Avenue publications, the houses there that give you a big advance? . . .

It couldn’t have been an overall scheme to avoid outside earning limits because the rules are clear. . . . The rules expressly exempt royalty income. . . .

During that three-year period when the counsel says there are seven instances where I made speeches to groups and they bought copies of these books, seven groups, seven instances, I made at least 700 speeches, for which I didn’t get any honorarium. . . .

All of us, in both political parties, must resolve to bring this period of mindless cannibalism to an end.

There has been enough of it.

I pray to God that we will do that and restore the spirit that always existed in this House. . . .

Well, I tell you what: I’m going to make you a proposition. Let me give you back this job you gave to me as a propitiation for all of this season of bad will that has grown up among us; give it back to you.

I will resign as Speaker of the House effective upon the election of my successor and I’ll ask that we call a caucus on the Democratic side for next Tuesday to choose a successor.

I don’t want to be a party to tearing up the institution. I love it.

To tell you the truth, this year, it has been very difficult for me to offer the kind of moral leadership that the organization needs because every time I have tried to talk about the needs of the country, about the needs for affordable homes, Jack Kemp’s idea or an idea that we are developing here, every time I have tried to talk about the need for minimum wage, tried to talk about the need for day care centers, embracing ideas on both sides of the aisle, the media have not been interested in that.

They wanted to ask me about petty personal finances.

You need somebody else. . . .

We’ll have a caucus on Tuesday. And then, I will offer to resign from the House sometime before the end of June. . . .

I am not a bitter man. I am not going to be. I am a lucky man.

God has given me the privilege of serving in this, the greatest institution on Earth, for a great many years, and I am grateful to the people of my district in Texas, I am grateful to my colleagues, all of you.

God bless this institution. God bless the United States.