Breaking the Rules
Aizenman, Nurith C.
Breaking the Rules As Congress frets over Clinton, two of its most ethically challenged Republicans are getting off scot-free BY NURITH C. AIZENMAN BACK IB FEBRUARY OF 1996, normally...
...The sheiks turned out to be undercover FBI agents in the now famous “Operation Abscaml’ Similarly, if it had not been for the curiosity of Justice Department investigators, Dan Rostenkowslu, the once powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would never have been held accountable for using taxpayer money to buy friends expensive gifts and pay them salaries for work they hadn’t performed...
...These are not your run-of-the-mill tax evasion or petty theft cases...
...The Hammer What is particularly disturbing about the charges against both Shuster and DeLay is that they involve the most pernicious form of political corruption...
...There was significant concern that the merger would have anti-competitive effects-particularly in Houston, where the deal would give Union Pacific control over 11 of the city’s 13 rail lines...
...After seven months of going door-todoor, he had yet to collect a single signature-and the deadline for complaints (which must be filed 60 days before an election) was fast approaching...
...During that first year, federal law prohibited Eppard from directly lobbying Shuster...
...exulted Ruslun...
...Johnson seized on this interpretation...
...Shuster had been short on specifics and had only been aslung about future actions under newly passed rules...
...The American people have this funny notion that there is deathly serious warfare between the parties,” observes Ruskm...
...If automatic carry over cannot be adopted as a permanent rule, it should at least continue to be observed as a strict tradition...
...A good outside counsel is necessary because it is simply unrealistic to ask members to aggressively probe colleagues with whom they must simultaneously maintain cordial relationships based on mutual assistance...
...Thanks to Shuster, Frito-Lay and FedEx won relief from regulations on mid-weight delivery trucks-over the protests of truckmg safety proponents...
...The Outdoor Advertisers of America should also be grateful to the chairman for persuading the House to slip a provision into the National Highway System bill that has made it easier to place billboards on scenic federal roads...
...Instead the two men are accused of the kind of quid pro quo that most fundamentally threatens our democracy: the exchange of money and friendship for legislative influence...
...DeLay also helped draft a failed bill which would have accomplished the same thing...
...Meanwhile the task force keeps pushing back the deadline for concluding its work...
...It was the Justice Department, for instance, not Ethics, which first uncovered the willingness of eight congressmen to take money from Arab sheiks seeking political favors...
...At present, the committee need only reveal its decision to launch a preliminary inquiry, and its final judgment on,a case...
...In August of 1995, Congressman DeLay wrote letters to the U.S...
...says Dan Buck...
...pushed the committee to exonerate him...
...Those who gave heavily to the GOP were labeled ‘Friendly,’ the others ‘Unfriendly...
...Shifting the investigatory burden to a fair and committed outsider gets around the problem...
...Instead, Eppard stayed on as assistant treasurer of Shuster’s campaign, drawing a salary of $3,000 per month and helping to raise over $655,000 for his re-election...
...Yet Shuster bandied the letter about as if it cleared him...
...If you’re wondering what progress was made since then, the answer is: Absolutely None...
...Nonetheless, Johnson sought to have the committee write a letter which would memorialize its conversations with Shuster...
...Normally this would not have been a problem because traditionally complaints have carried over into the next Congress...
...S h ust e r’s Shenanigans Tom “The Hammer” DeLay may be the master of influence peddling, but when it comes to mixing politics, money, and friendship, Bud Shuster is the Chuck Yeager of Congress-continually pushing the envelope of what is permissible...
...The Gingrich case-which did not get off the ground until outside attorney Richard Cole was brought in-demonstrated how once members are confronted with hard evidence gathered by an outside investigator, it is harder for them to keep their heads in the sand...
...But at present, the decision to bring in out side counsel is purely optional, and members often resist doing so...
...and Thomas Barrett (D-Wis...
...During the 104th Congress, DeLay openly invited favored lobbyists to write the legislation deregulating the very industries they represented...
...NOWth ere’s a man with a vertebrae...
...Still, in the founder’s defense, they did not completely defang the judicial and executive branches...
...signed off on DeLay...
...According to Greve, Randy DeLay met or called his brother 21 times for the specific purpose of lobbying him on the Cemex issue...
...The younger DeLay got into the lobbying business almost immediately after his brother was elected majority whip...
...It wasn’t long before Ruskin realized that he had chosen a mission impossible...
...There should also be no question as to whether complaints left unresolved at the end of one session will roll over into the next one...
...Otherwise, Ethics Committee members will have too strong an incentive to drag their feet-just ignore a pesky complaint and it will eventually go away...
...Once an investigation is in full swing, the Ethics members are in the unenviable position of having to dig up dirt on the same people with whom they must trade favors and votes in the course of their other business...
...In order to preserve the balance of power between the three government branches, the Constitution charges Congress with policing itself...
...Ben Cardin, formerly the ranking Democrat on Ethics...
...During that period, the committee’s staff can begin to collect information on the case...
...Outsiders are not allowed to file directly...
...At the very least, the elder DeLay’s relationship with his lobbyist sibling violates the House prohibition against “discriminat[ing] unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone...
...Among DeLay’s customers was a Mexican cement company called Cemex, which was involved in a trade dispute with the United States...
...Malung that step automatic would free members from having to take the politically unpalatable decision of moving forward on a casethey would no longer have a choice...
...The committee can @nd, once in a blue moon, does) initiate complaints against members...
...Common Cause’s Meredith McGehee was disappointed, but hardly shocked...
...Ultimately the best weapon against corrupt congressmen is the ballot box...
...Possibly because Majority Whip Tom DeLay is the third most powerful member of the House...
...The Justice Department has also stepped into the void left by the Ethics Committee in the Shuster case...
...And few expect its recommendations to involve anything more than marginal tinkering...
...And last year, Eppard lobbied Shuster on behalf of Carnival Cruise Lines for his support of a “technical amendment” tacked onto the Coast Guard re-authorization bill that would have protected cruise companies from lawsuits by women raped aboard their ships unless the woman had also suffered “substantial physical injury...
...It is as yet unclear whether either complaint will be put back on the agenda...
...Ironically, a reading of the letter would seem to indicate that Shuster had indeed violated the rules...
...But once again, Nancy Johnson threw a wrench in the works...
...According to Roll Call’s Timothy Burger, Eppard’s car even sported the license plate “US House PA 9.” No need to mention which Congressman represents the Ninth District of Pennsylvania...
...he remembers...
...I knew [the Ethics Committee] wasn’t going to do anything about it,” recalls former Representative Patricia Schroeder...
...While Ruskin was starring in his own private version of Death of a Salesman, the folks at Common Cause were trying the different-but equally fruitlessapproach of urging the Ethics Committee to open its own inquiry into Shuster...
...Ann Eppard Associates was an overnight success...
...And both DeLays got other prominent Republicans to sign letters in support of Cemex...
...As a result, members are rarely aggressive in pursuing even less powerful colleagues...
...Perhaps because Union Pacific was one of his brother’s clients...
...Questions have also been raised about DeLay’s work on behalf of interests represented by his lobbyist brother, Houston lawyer Randy DeLay...
...so did Eppard’s reportedly daily presence in Shuster’s office during the period she was forbidden to lobby him...
...This breathing space might have been a good idea if it had lasted a few weeks-but the moratorium has now been in place for four months...
...Randy DeLay is-you guessed it-a lobbyist for the coalition...
...according to William Roberts of the Jour?tal of Commerce, it racked up over $1 million in its first year alone-over $600,000 of that from transportation clients...
...Then there was the creative use of Eppard’s Alexandria, Virginia home...
...Hurry Up &Wait By September, Gary Ruskin was beginning to lose hope...
...There was this period of months where everybody we’d call up was not interested...
...By the time the 30 days were up, Congress had adjourned, temporarily halting all action on complaints...
...Washington Post reporters David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf described how corporate lobbyists meeting with DeLay were instructed to look themselves up in a book listing the “amounts and percentages of money that the 400 largest political action committees had contributed to Republicans and Democrats over the last two years...
...This was not the only time the brothers DeLay worked in tandem...
...Filers could also be made liable to a fine or reprimand for complaints deemed groundless...
...In November of 1994, after over 20 years of service, Eppard resigned from her job as Shuster’s chief of staff and started her own lobbying firm, Ann Eppard Associates...
...If it becomes clear that a congressman is ethically challenged, we can vote him out of office-without need of a lengthy and costly inquiry to tease out the finer points of his guilt...
...And there is speculation that Congress will soon vote to close the letter of refusal route-leaving Ruskin with the near impossible task of finding someone willing to actually spomor complaints against Shuster and DeLay...
...In February of 1996, Shuster released the transcript of a conversation he had recently had with an Ethics Committee staffer and tried to claim that it somehow absolved him...
...Breaking the Rules As Congress frets over Clinton, two of its most ethically challenged Republicans are getting off scot-free BY NURITH C. AIZENMAN BACK IB FEBRUARY OF 1996, normally easygoing Gary Ruskin was on the warpath...
...Reporters like William Roberts, Frank Greve, Timothy Burger, and others mentioned in this story deserve credit for shining their light on Shuster and DeLay-but they are all too rare...
...Cemex had been slapped with an anti-dumping tariff for selling its cement over the border at unfair prices...
...Her former boss has fought hard in the interest of many of them...
...but she hardly kept her distance...
...Those who do get corralled into service are usually bribed with plum assignments on the Appropriations or Ways and Means Committees...
...Not only did the Ethics Committee decline to investigate Shuster, but its chairwoman, Nancy Johnson (R-Conn...
...I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of calling up 70 people who all say no to you...
...Since there would be no way of knowing whether candidates selected for the pool would end up investigating a Republican or a Democrat, committee members would have an incentive to choose individuals likely to be fair to both...
...Possibly encouraged by Shuster’s declarations that Eppard had been his “right hand for over a quarter of a century,” representatives of these industries practically fell over themselves to sign her on...
...The Ethics Committee should also be put on a strict timetable...
...Many violations of House ethics rules are also federal crimes...
...Nonetheless, Eppard’s clients have every reason to be pleased with her work...
...No one, it seemed, was eager to cross them...
...But in this case the request was greeted with deafening silence...
...Apart from controlling billions of dollars of government spending on federal highways, the committee oversees the nation’s railroads, aviation, trucking and shipping industries...
...Yet this is the same home out of which Eppard runs her lobbying practice, serving clients with interests before Shuster’s committee...
...It’s pretty tiresome.,’ Tiresome, but typical...
...And-as if things weren’t murky enough-it is the same home at which Shuster regularly spent the night while Congress was in session, presumably without paying rent...
...Leon happens to be the attorney for none other than...former Bud Shuster aide Ann Eppard...
...Instead, at all phases of the ethics process, the status of a complaint, and the findings of the investigating counsel should be made public...
...To those members who complain that such openness would violate their privacy, there is a simple response: The ethics process is not a criminal proceeding in which the rights of the individual take precedence-it is a forum for public reckoning, fundamental to the safeguarding of our democracy...
...he’d file a complaint with the House Ethics Committee so that it would be forced to investigate the allegations...
...Confidence in the task force was was also shaken earlier on when Co-Chair Bob Livingston announced he was bringing in Washington lawyer Richard Leon as the task force’s legal counsel...
...As for DeLay, he was completely off the radar...
...The moratorium’s ostensible purpose was to clear the air after the House voted to reprimand Gingrich for ethical violations and “assess” him $300,000...
...Every effort must be made to get it to them...
...And as of late January a moratorium was declared on all complaints until a special task force could come up with recommendations for improving the Ethics Committee...
...Luis Gutierrez (D-Calif...
...No one serves on this committee by choice...
...It’s hard to blame them...
...Still, there is only so much that the department can do...
...It didn’t...
...Why would DeLay act against his constituents’ interests...
...This, despite the fact that House rules then in place clearly stated that a member could not accept hospitality from a personal friend for more than 30 days a year without obtaining a prior written waiver from the House Ethics Committee...
...And Eppard continued to perform many of her former duties for the congressmanrepresenting him on an advisory panel on base closings, vetting county commissioner candidates, and driving him around Washington...
...The Justice Department is a crucial means of ensuring that corrupt politicians aren’t let off the hook...
...DeLay’s fundraising tactics were in direct violation of House ethics rules barring “considerations such as political support, party affiliation, or campaign contributions,” from affecting “either the decision of a Member to provide assistance, or the quality of the help that is given.,’ His blunt approach earned him a new nickname: “The Hammer...
...Similarly, once the counsel has completed his preliminary investigation, the committee should have a deadline for voting as to whether to adopt a “Statement of Alleged Violation”-the committee’s version of an indictment...
...And the same holds true for the judgment hearings the committee would hold once the final inquiry is complete...
...Unfortunately, they are constitutionally mandated to fulfill this responsibility...
...Members think, ‘Why get involved...
...He responded that since the Ethics Committee would have to be reconstituted for the new Congress, it would be up to the new committee to decide...
...Ruskin figured Republicans would be less than happy to help him attack two of their own, so he went straight to the Democrats...
...According to Frank Greve of Knight-Ridder, Randy DeLay raked in over $SSO,OOO during his first year in business...
...Hours before the deadline, Ruskin rushed into the Ethics Committee with his completed complaints...
...Technically, everything is over,” proclaimed Chief Ethics Counsel Ted Van Der Mied...
...If they are not, Ruslun will face an uphill battle to refile them...
...In a matter of months Eppard became a hired gun for Federal Express, Amtrak, Conrail, Frito-Lay, and the Outdoor Advertisers Association of America...
...One of the lobbyists interviewed by the Post learned the hard way that his PAC was in the wrong category...
...Some were even spotted sitting on the dais during committee hearings...
...The founding fathers certainly meant well, but it’s possible that in this particular instance they made a (perish the thought...
...As for those in the “Friendly” camp, there’s little doubt that they were rewarded with unprecedented perks...
...Its efforts should be applauded -and encouraged...
...From this perspective, investigations of politicians are only important in so far as they bring to light misdeeds that voters ought to know about...
...This was too much for the Democrats, who charged that, at Shuster’s urging, Johnson was trying to force through an after-thefact written waiver to shield him from subsequent inquiry...
...Ethics Shmethics As soon as the allegations against Shuster and DeLay began to surface, watchdog groups like the Congressional Accountability Project (CAP) and Common Cause sprang into action...
...By the time [he] left the congressman’s office, he knew...
...The clients came running...
...Her timing couldn’t have been better...
...The secretive House ethics process must also be flung open...
...Instead, the House’s quirky rules required Ruslun to either find a Congressman to sponsor his complaint, or obtain three letters from members officially refissing to do so...
...So far only two of the 10 slots on the Ethics Committee have been filled...
...This danger could be avoided by prohibiting the filing of complaints less than 90 days before an election-in contrast to the 60-day deadline currently in place...
...The Ultimate Weapon But no amount of restructuring can address the Ethics Committee’s fundamental problem: When it comes to judging their peers, members of Congress have an inherent conflict of interest...
...But the reception from the minority party was equally cool...
...Trade Representative and the Secretary of Commerce unsuccessfully urging that the tariff be lifted...
...Once a complaint is filed, the accused party is given 30 days to respond...
...Once filed, complaints should be automatically assigned to an outside investigator who would gather evidence and make a recommendation as to whether a preliminary inquiry is warranted...
...His call to arms: news reports that two of the most prominent Republicans in COngress, Representatives Bud Shuster and Tom DeLay, had handed out legislative favors to family, friends and financial contributors...
...DeLay was also a major supporter of the 1-69 Mid-Continent Highway Coalition’s bid for designation as a federal highway...
...It is the least desired assignment in Congress,” says Rep...
...As director of The Congressional Accountability Project, a Ralph Nader watchdog group, Ruskin felt it was his job to make sure they didn’t get away with it...
...Then, at the last minute, he had a breakthrough...
...It’s the equivalent of the police saying, ‘We’re not going to have any arrests until we figure out what we’re doing...
...Even if a member’s record is squeaky clean, a complaint may come back to haunt him in other ways...
...At a time when members of Congress insist on analyzing every drop of President Clinton’s coffee, Shuster and DeLay appear to have escaped notice...
...Johnson asked the House parliamentarian for advice on whether the pending complaints should automatically carry over...
...Eppard also chaired a fund-raiser to collect $40,000 to finance a portrait of Shuster which was hung in the Transportation Committee hearing room...
...I felt like I was telling him there was no Santa Claus...
...The committee has taken full advantage of its own procedures to accomplish as little as possible...
...After much wrangling, the committee produced its compromise: a bizarre letter to Shuster which was “not intended to express approval or disapproval of any actions you have taken in the past,” but instead contained “the committee’s general guidelines on the issues raised...
...Shuster has described Eppard’s waterfront town house as “the legal repository for our campaign documents,” and the base from which Eppard did her fundraising...
...The Ethics committee’s end-of-theCongress report stated that the parliamentarian had “ruled” that the Complaints had “expired...
...Of course the success of an investigation would be entirely dependent on the character of the outside counsel-and knowledgeable, but nonpartisan lawyers are not a dime a dozen in Washington...
...Shuster’s office has maintained that the two were discussing a completely unrelated matter, and both Shuster and Eppard have insisted that they scrupulously avoided any discussion of issues affecting Eppard’s clients during the “cooling off’’ year...
...And even if he had been aslung about his past actions, oral advice is not an acceptable substitute for the prior written waiver members must obtain to get around the gift rule...
...Although the Senate employs this system without problems, there is legitimate concern that allowing outsiders to file will unleash a flood of frivolous complaints designed to harass members or hurt their chances for re-election...
...More journalists need to follow their example...
...In any event, it will be a while before the committee has a chance to even contemplate the issue...
...The downside is incredible and the upside doesn’t exist...
...To start with, given the reluctance of members to follow up on reports of even obvious wrong-doing by their colleagues, the rules should be changed to allow outsiders to file complaints directly...
...The Ethics Committee played no role...
...If you are a congressman and you file against a colleague “that member will remember it FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE...
...Although, as Newt Gingrich‘ s case demonstrated, members are occasionally roused to attack high-profile opponents, Gingrich is the exception that proves the rule: Most of the time congressmen are loathe to file-or even facilitatea complaint...
...But voters can’t do their job unless they have the information to make wise decisions...
...That was a crazy day...
...No one was biting...
...The Justice Department refused to let the matter rest until Rostenkowski had been sentenced to jail...
...Although a system that relies on members to judge each other has unavoidable pitfalls, there are a number of measures that can and should be taken to force members into doing a better job...
...Perhaps the starkest example of this was the allegation that DeLay had directly linked campaign contributions to official actions...
...And Representatives Robert Matsui (D-Calif...
...His plan was simple...
...Not surprisingly, Ethics is the only committee which members actively lobby not to be on...
...Perhaps his smelliest achievement has been the mutually lucrative alliance he has forged with longtime aide Ann Eppard...
...And in the absence of vigorous investigation by the Ethics Committee, the Justice Department can and sometimes does pick up the slack...
...The Republicans had just retaken the House, and her old boss was poised to become Chairman of the Transportation Committee...
...his group would have to give the party a lot more money...
...Sixteen months later-and over two-and-a-half years after Shuster and DeLay first engaged in their dubious activities-the Ethics Committee has yet to launch even a “preliminary inquiry...
...And Ethics is almost always the last committee to be filled...
...and as Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, Bud Shuster effectively controls the funding for roads in every member’s district...
...But what really happens is that there are all sorts of areas that are off-limits, and ethics is one of them...
...Cleaning House That's a shame...
...Many actions deemed unethical under House rules are not technically illegal under federal law...
...The overlapping ties binding Shuster and Eppard caused some alarm among her competition...
...Just lodging the complaints was a Herculean chore...
...CAP’S Gary Ruskin began the laborious task of gathering the signatures he needed to file each complaint...
...According to The Boston Globe, among other questions, investigators are examining whether Shuster or Ann Eppard helped obtain more favorable settlements for two contributors whose business properties were being seized to make way for the construction of the federally funded Central Artery Project in Boston...
...Retiring Democrats Patricia Schroeder and Pat Williams quickly followed suit on the Shuster Complaint...
...The status of both the Shuster and DeLay complaints was suddenly thrown in doubt...
...And opportunities for foot-dragging abound...
...In order to ensure that the committee always chooses them, it should be required to assemble a pool of possible counsels in advance...
...However this is a purely optional step-and one which congressional sources say was not taken in either the Shuster or DeLay complaints...
...The counsels would then be “on call”-picked from the pool at random whenever a complaint was filed...
...The two friends could certainly be insensitive to appearances-once holding a meeting in a back room at the precise moment the Transportation Committee was passing a bill on ocean shipping reform in which Eppard’s clients had a major stake...
...When Congressman DeLay fought to allow Union Pacific Railroad to acquire Southern Pacific for $5.4 billion, some Texas voters were confused...
...notes longtime congressional aide Dan Buck...
...The story of how they did so reveals as much about the troubled ethics process as it does about the questionable morality of these two members...
...unfortunate mistake...
...Two of the members who signed the letters of refusal he needed to file his Shuster complaint have since retired...
...agreed to sign a letter of refusal for both the Shuster and DeLay cases...
...And even if Ruskin did manage to file his complaints, sympathetic Democrats warned, his chances of ultimate success were nil...
...If the general membership of the House is reluctant to pursue their colleagues, members of the Ethics Committee regard the prospect with horror...
...Interestingly the department appears to be focusing on a whole new set of issues beyond those mentioned in Ruslun’s complaint...
...Nonetheless, as Richard Cole proved, such people do exist...
...Shortly after the outside counsel comes back with his initial recommendation as to whether a preliminary investigation is warranted, the committee should be required to vote...
...Many worry about inviting scrutiny of their own ethics by the opposing side...
Vol. 29 • June 1997 • No. 6
