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House Defeats First Ethics Vote Protest
The House just beat back the first formal protest against last night's controversial votes to create a new Office of Congressional Ethics. The chamber voted along party lines, 215-193, to table a Republican resolution calling for yesterday's votes to be scuttled and for at least two full-scale investigations of the evening's events.
Republicans believe that a procedural vote before final passage of the ethics reform bill last night was held open well past the allotted 15 minutes because Democrats were losing on the question and needed the extra time to twist arms. The GOP argues that tactic violated a new House rule implemented at the start of this Congress preventing a vote from being "held open for the sole purpose of reversing the outcome of such vote."
Today's vote was on a GOP resolution calling for both the ethics committee and another panel -- a select committee already established to investigate a controversial August vote -- to probe last night's events, and for the controversial vote in question to be vacated. The GOP's move today failed, but that doesn't mean this fight is over. Bringing such resolutions to the floor is one of the few weapons available to the minority in the House, so Republicans are expected to employ this method more often as this election year goes on to make the argument that Democrats are hypocrites.
By Ben Pershing |
March 12, 2008; 11:42 AM ET
Ethics and Rules
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Posted by: Karen | March 12, 2008 3:08 PM
Last night the House leadership kept the vote open for 27 minutes in order to twist arms to get the rule passed. This violated the rules made at the beginning of this congress, whereby the Democrat leadership changed the rules, and made it illegal to hold a vote open for the purpose of changing a vote.Well, last night they broke their new rule and passed the new rules legistation, establishing outside of congress, a committee for ethics consideration, instead of doing it by the Ethics Committee, containing members of both parties, which was supposed to be bipartisan in nature, so that the person being investigated would get a fair hearing. Well, when the Democrats put Tubb-Jones as chairman of the committee, it ceased to work, and to top it off, she accused A member from Washigton State of breaking the rules. Today he took a personal priviledge time and with witnesses, debunked her claims, and ask for n apology. We will see if one is coming, but hell will probably freeze over, before she apologizes.
Posted by: Elmer | March 12, 2008 5:02 PM
Isn't this the kettle calling the pot black?
Posted by: Jim R | March 13, 2008 5:18 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
It is weird that the Washington Post is so unwilling to print what happened: In violation of house rules, the democrats left open voting on a bill to get the votes they needed. It is not a matter of opinion. Just press rewind on CSPAN. For the Washington Post to continue its censorship of democrat improprieties, is a reason who the recent circulaton numbers show readers disgust:
The Washington Post-635,087-(-97,785) -- (-13.3%)
Should we pop out the editorial and articles on the republicans holding open a vote? Oh, boy was the WaPo mad. But apparently, all their fingers are broken and they are totally incapable of informing the public of a democrat violation of rules.
That is why there is the internet. WaPo has become so partisan, so bias, so uninformative, you bird wouldn't do his business on it.