GOP Blames Check Scandal on 1-Party Rule

Republican congressional leaders, declaring that the bad-check scandal in the House of Representatives could contribute to a historic turnover, sought Sunday to blame the scandal on 38 years of Democratic domination and urged voters to sweep aside the majority party this fall.

Democrats have controlled the House for “five years longer than Castro has controlled Cuba,” said Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House Republican whip, in a televised interview. This “one-party monopoly of power in the House” has fostered corruption and “unbelievably bad management by the Democratic leadership,” he said.

Democrats hold a 268-166 majority in the House. But those numbers could change substantially after the November elections as a result of retirements, reapportionment and what polls show to be a growing “throw-the-bums-out” attitude among voters.

At least 30--and perhaps as many as 60--House members are expected to give up their seats this year as a result of retirements and redistricting. And with anti-incumbent sentiment spreading, the number of Congress members who leave office could grow considerably after November’s elections.

As a result, political analysts say that 1992 has the potential to be a replay of 1974, when the Watergate scandal cost the Republicans dearly at the polls. The House that year had 92 new faces, the most since the 1948 election, which ushered in 118 members.

Clearly on the defensive because of the GOP attack, Democratic leaders have stressed that the House bank was essentially a private checking cooperative and that all overdrafts were covered by funds in the accounts of other House members. Since members were not charged for overdrafts--and sometimes not even notified that they had occurred--many have said that they were unaware of the problem.

“I think what you are seeing now is a public reaction that will have to be followed by information,” said House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), appearing on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley” news program. “There’s an impression in many parts of the country that somehow these checks were written against government funds.”

“It will probably cost some people their seats,” said Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kan.). Like Foley, however, he declined to predict the political effect of the scandal.

According to congressional investigators, 355 current and former lawmakers wrote bad checks at the private House bank over a period of 39 months. The House Ethics Committee has designated 24 past and present members as the worst offenders because their overdrafts exceeded their monthly take-home pay in at least eight months.

The identities of 21 of the 24 were leaked to the media Saturday. All were Democrats, except for one former House member who switched parties to run for governor of Arkansas as a Republican. The three not identified are believed to be Republicans.

Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) said Sunday that he is one of those Republicans. Edwards, who did not reveal details of the transactions, said that he was “stunned and humiliated” to learn he was named and accepts “with humility” the report of the committee.

“By all the measurements at our disposal until Friday afternoon, including cash at hand, it appeared my account was nowhere near the criteria used in determining the 24 accounts described as having abused the system,” Edwards said in a statement. “However, in the methods used by the committee, which did not consider automatic withdrawals as debits made after the salary deposits, my account is within their guidelines.”

Rep. Robert W. Davis (R-Mich.) also is believed to be on the list. The third Republican is not known. No laws apparently were broken, and there were no taxpayer funds in the House bank, which was shut down in October. Even so, the fact that House members were able to write hundreds of checks against insufficient funds with impunity has contributed to perceptions that members of Congress consider themselves exempt from the rules and restraints that most Americans must observe.

“I think the electoral fallout will be a landscape change,” predicted Rep. Guy Vander Jagt, of Michigan, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We will see more than 100 new faces in the next Congress.”

Appearing on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday” program, Vander Jagt attributed the House bank scandal and other alleged abuses of congressional privilege to nearly four decades of Democratic rule in the lower house.

“This kind of corruption and abuse is an inevitable result of 38 consecutive years of one-party rule,” he said. “That wasn’t healthy for Poland or Hungary or the Soviet Union, and we need to put (the House) under new management.”

An early test of the political fallout could come in the Illinois primary Tuesday. Rep. Charles A. Hayes, a South Side Chicago Democrat, already was embroiled in a tough primary battle when weekend news reports identified him as one of the worst offenders in the check-writing scandal. According to the Associated Press, Hayes wrote 716 bad checks during the 39-month period examined by the House Ethics Committee.

His primary opponent, Chicago Alderman Bobby Rush, immediately declared that the five-term incumbent has “become a captive of the perks and privileges of Congress.”

Also hard hit is New York Rep. Robert J. Mrazek, of Long Island, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the Senate. His name is near the top of the worst-offenders list with 972 bad checks, the Associated Press reported. Mrazek’s account was said to be overdrawn during 23 of the 39 months examined. Gingrich, the second-ranking House Republican, suggested that a special prosecutor should be named to investigate the scandal.

Although the overdrafts themselves are not believed to have been illegal, some members may have violated tax or campaign spending laws by using the House bank to give their campaigns what amounted to free loans.

Republicans repeatedly have complained that the independent-counsel law has been used to investigate and prosecute officials of the Republican-controlled executive branch, while the Democratic-controlled Congress has exempted itself from similar scrutiny.

But Foley countered that the U.S. attorney general, appointed by President Bush, could undertake a probe of members of Congress without a special prosecutor.

In his televised remarks, the House’s top Democrat admitted that he had written at least two bad checks. “I regret that,” Foley said.

And despite Gingrich’s fiery denunciation of the Democrats who control the House, he had to concede that his check-writing record appears even worse than Foley’s.

“It’s around 20,” Gingrich said.