GOP Leaders Call for Full List of House Check Kiters : Disclosure: Naming all 355 offenders is expected to hurt Democrats more because of their greater numbers in Congress.

Key Republicans on Tuesday demanded disclosure of the names of all members of Congress who overdrew their accounts at the House bank, rather than spotlighting only the 24 worst offenders as the House Ethics Committee has recommended.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), the third-ranking Republican in the House, said that he will try to win passage of a resolution to require listing the names of all 355 current and former lawmakers who wrote one or more bad checks during a recent three-year period.

Lewis said that he will advocate his position today at a meeting of House Republicans, who are groping for a party consensus on an issue that could prove to be politically damaging for dozens of their colleagues in this election year.

The scandal could be more embarrassing for Democrats than Republicans, since they have 100 more members in the House. But Republicans said that they would have casualties, too, if a full list is published.

No tax funds were lost because of the now-defunct bank’s tolerance of repeated overdrafts. But no penalties were charged and many voters are likely to see the bank’s treatment of its congressional customers as special privilege.

“The only way for people to believe in the institution is to truly reveal what’s going on,” Lewis said in an interview. “I believe the answer is full disclosure. . . . The whole list will come out eventually anyway.”

Another Californian, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), took the same position in a letter to Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.).

“The American people are justifiably outraged that hundreds of members overdrew their bank balances . . . and that many of them were chronic offenders,” Gallegly said. “But they are even more outraged by what can be seen as a cover-up designed to protect members from scrutiny.”

Foley has said that he will support the Ethics Committee recommendation, which was sent to the House on a 10-4 vote. It would name only 19 current and five former members who wrote overdrafts that exceeded more than a month’s take-home pay in at least eight of the 39 months examined in the committee inquiry.

The four Republicans who dissented from the Ethics Committee’s recommendation urged the House to disclose the names of all 355 lawmakers who wrote one or more bad checks. But they suggested releasing the names of the worst offenders 10 days before disclosure of the rest of the names.

“The majority report established a definition of abuse so narrow that many others who by any common-sense standard would qualify as abusers, escape designation and disclosure,” they said.

Rep. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), Rep. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) and Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio) signed the minority report.

If the House balks at full disclosure, the minority report suggests that it name the 55 current and former members of Congress who overdrew their accounts by more than the amount of their monthly take-home pay for two months or more during the 39 months.

Unless this is done, the minority report said, one member who wrote more than 850 bad checks totaling more than $150,000 would not be identified. Another lawmaker who wrote more than 400 rubber checks totaling more than $180,000 and was overdrawn by more than his net monthly salary for six months also would escape exposure, the minority report said.

While many Republicans favor fuller disclosure, no consensus emerged at a special meeting of GOP leaders on what alternative to recommend when the House considers later this week how to deal with the abuses.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) reportedly favors supporting the committee’s recommendation, which was endorsed by three GOP members of an ethics subcommittee that investigated the bank’s practices for more than five months.

“People (at the GOP leadership meeting) were all over the board on whether to support the Ethics panel,” Lewis acknowledged. Under the Ethics Committee’s plan, every member would be able to obtain a document detailing his banking history. That history then could be made public by the congressman, along with his own explanation.

Even the committee members who studied the scandal do not know the names of offenders, since they worked with coded account numbers. The ethics panel said that the worst offender in Congress wrote 996 bad checks during the 39 months, congressional sources said.

House Bank’s No-Bounce Policy

The former House bank offered members:

* No-interest checking accounts.

* Direct deposit of monthly paychecks.

The bank had a system for dealing with rubber checks. But it sometimes was changed on a case-by-case system. Here’s how the bank was supposed to work:

1. If a member’s personal check was received in the last three days of a pay period and his account did not have enough money to cover it, the check was to be held until his next paycheck became available. The member was not to be notified the check had been held.

2. When a rubber check was submitted other than the last three days of a pay period, the member was to be notified by telephone and asked to make a deposit. If the deposit was not made, the check still was to be held until his next paycheck.

3. If a member’s personal check overdrew his account by more than his next paycheck, the member was to be notified by telephone to make a deposit. If a deposit was not made in three to five days, the check was to be returned.

Source: House Administration Committee report