Ethics: In the Eye of the Beholden?

WASHINGTON —  Faced with mounting evidence that current ethics rules do not cover new ways lobbyists have devised to win favor with members of Congress, the House ethics committee plans to unveil an array of proposed changes next year.

But the proposed changes appear likely to loosen ethics restrictions, not tighten them.

One change would let special interests begin to pay some of a representative’s official operating expenses -- in effect, making the member beholden for the daily activities of his or her congressional office. Another would increase the number of family members allowed to go on junkets paid for by private interests, a move seen as weakening the rules designed to keep members of Congress independent of outside groups.

The House proposals to loosen ethics restrictions parallel a lack of reform efforts on ethics issues in the Congress as a whole.

Former Senate ethics committee chairman Harry Reid (D-Nev.), now Senate minority leader, has made no apparent effort to push for the ethics review he called for last year after The Times detailed extensive financial relationships between members of Reid’s family and business interests he had helped.

And this past fall, House Republicans voted to abolish a rule they had pushed for in 1993 that barred members who were under indictment on felony charges from serving in leadership positions.

The indictment rule was eliminated to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who is being investigated by a grand jury in Travis County, Texas. DeLay, whom the ethics committee admonished twice on other matters earlier this year, dismisses the inquiry as politically motivated.

“The message to members is clear,” Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability Project said. “The ethics committees are toothless by design.”

Dennis F. Thompson, a Harvard University professor and the author of a book on congressional ethics, questioned whether the present system of self-policing on ethics was workable, though he expressed doubt that members would ever turn the matter over to an outside body, as some reformers suggested.

“Keeping investigations to themselves is the ultimate conflict of interest. And it is bipartisan in an unfortunate way,” he added, noting that members know that “if a Republican is charged this month, a Democrat will be charged next.”

“In the meantime,” he said, “citizens and the democratic process suffer.”

The kinds of ethics issues that have stimulated calls for reform are reflected in the recent activities of Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.), who chaired an investigative subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Commerce committee.

During the past year, Greenwood’s subcommittee conducted two probes of the pharmaceuticals industry. One involved apparent conflicts of interest among scientists at the National Institutes of Health who also worked for pharmaceutical companies. The subcommittee also investigated suspected links between antidepressant drugs and suicide among children.

At one point, Greenwood sent a letter to the chief executive of the pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer demanding information on allegations that Pfizer and other companies withheld data showing that suicide rates rose among children who were given the antidepressants.

At the same time the probes were underway, a drug industry trade group supported by those companies was secretly negotiating with Greenwood over a job that would more than quadruple his House salary -- paying him $650,000 a year, with bonuses totaling as much as $200,000 more.

Greenwood did not disclose the negotiations or step aside as subcommittee chairman until after he announced he would retire from Congress at the end of the term and take the job heading up the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Greenwood said in an interview that his announcement that he was accepting the job was not connected with a two-month delay in a hearing in the antidepressant drug probe. The postponement was announced just before the job announcement in July.

“I am absolutely convinced I handled this in the most ethical manner possible,” Greenwood said.

That, advocates of ethics reform say, is exactly the problem: Outdated rules do not cover present-day circumstances, and Congress has shown little appetite for changing the rules.

“They really need to clamp down and at least enforce the existing rules, but it’s clear they will not do that,” said Melanie Sloan of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “They just don’t want to enforce the rules.”

In Greenwood’s case, four months after he announced he would take the industry job, the House ethics committee issued a memorandum advising members to be cautious in negotiating for future jobs. A nearly identical memo had been issued two years earlier.

“First and foremost,” the new memo stated, “it would be improper for a member to permit the prospect of future employment to influence his or her official actions.”

Greenwood said his official actions were not influenced by the job prospect.

In a similar case, Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin, (R-La.), who helped oversee the pharmaceutical industry, will become president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America on Monday, when he retires from Congress.

The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will earn more than $1 million a year in his new job.

When the House reconvenes early next month, it is expected to consider the changes proposed by its ethics panel. One would allow the use of campaign funds for cellphones and cars used in performing congressional duties.

The ethics panel is also recommending a rule to allow the issuance of subpoenas in the preliminary stages of an investigation. But the committee’s leaders indicated in a letter to House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-San Dimas) that the change was intended not as a crackdown but as a method of ending inquiries more swiftly and quietly.

“Such matters could be handled far more expeditiously, and with greater assurance that confidentiality would be maintained, if the chairman and ranking minority member had the authority to issue subpoenas in such instances,” said the letter from Republican Chairman Joel Hefley of Colorado and ranking Democrat Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia.

Confidentiality rules governing the ethics committees are tight. The committees normally do not disclose the existence of inquiries unless they result in official action against a member, which rarely happens.

The DeLay case and events surrounding it indicate a new note of partisanship in the ethics process.

The move by House Republicans to eliminate the rule barring members under indictment from serving in the leadership came almost simultaneously with what some regarded as a retaliatory attack by the House ethics committee against outgoing U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, a Texas Democrat who had earlier filed a long list of ethics charges against DeLay.

As a result of Bell’s charges, the ethics committee, within a matter of weeks, issued two admonishment letters to DeLay. Among other things, he was charged with enlisting the aid of a federal agency to track down political opponents in his home state.

But the ethics panel also sent a letter to Bell criticizing him for including allegations that were not substantiated.

Largely ignored by both the House and the Senate is the increasingly common practice of companies and interest groups making payments to relatives of influential legislators.

As reported by The Times earlier this year, for instance, Karen Weldon, the lobbyist daughter of U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), has earned about $1 million in fees from foreign clients her father has helped. The House ethics committee panel currently is considering the Weldon case.

In another case reported by The Times, the sister of U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall, (D-W.Va.) is earning $15,000 a month lobbying members of Congress, including her brother, for the tiny Persian Gulf country of Qatar. The Rahall and Weldon cases were two among several reported by The Times in which relatives of members of Congress engaged in lobbying activities.

Others include Sens. John B. Breaux (D-La.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Reid. The Senate is scrutinizing business dealings involving members of Stevens’ family and business partners whom, as The Times has reported, he helped.

In response to last year’s Times stories, reform groups called for a crackdown on enforcement of existing rules, as well as steps to tighten restrictions on payments to relatives and in other matters.

Congress has thus far taken no action.

Ethics rules do not bar family members from engaging in lobbying. And they do not specifically bar members of Congress from helping those who employ their relatives.

Nor, said Celia Wexler, a lobbyist for Common Cause, do congressional ethics rules directly address a case like Greenwood’s.

“We certainly think it is an unfortunate situation,” Wexler said, noting Greenwood’s reputation as a “good legislator.”

More than a year ago, House ethics chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) said he would assemble a panel of experts, including former House members, to revamp ethics rules.

He declined to discuss what happened to his plans, but his spokesperson, Sarah Shelden, said that a panel hadn’t been assembled.

If Hefley has acted too slowly for reformers, his actions apparently were too independent for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who may remove him from the ethics committee.