Date: 2000-11-01
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I rise again in strong opposition to this Contempt of Congress resolution. When there are so many important issues such as energy and health care and education policy which have languished in this Congress. it is ridiculous that this vendetta is taking the time of the House. The crime charged in this resolution is the refusal of three witnesses to answer certain questions from Republican members of the Committee on Resources. Lets be clear: these three individuals have worked to assure that the taxpayers receive a fair share of the royalties from oil companies drilling on public lands. Those same oil companies. who have never received a Republican subpoena. have shortchanged the taxpayers by billions of dollars in royalty under payments. as most recently evidenced by a total of $438 million in settlement payments in litigation which inspired the committees investigation. We should be spending our time and resources in Congress on issues that really matter to the American people. We should not use the vast powers of Congress to punish those who helped to blow the whistle on the oil company ripoffs and who. understandably. refused to cooperate with a rogue committee operating without regard to the House rules. And we should not be burdening the U.S. Attorney. who has plenty of work to do combating serious crimes. with an illconceived contempt resolution based on an investigation so procedurally flawed that the criminal charges would not survive judicial review. Lets start by making it clear what this contempt resolution is not about. The question before the House is not whether the arrangement between the project. on Government Oversight and two Federal employees to share royalty underpayment litigation awards was illegal or even improper. Federal employees have been allowed. under certain circumstances. to participate as whistle blowers in False Claims Act litigation. In this case. the POGO arrangement is under active investigation by the Department of Justice. But no one has been indicted. no one has been tried. and certainly no one has been convicted. For Congress. to prejudice that process with premature conclusions of illegality would be irresponsible. So. let us be clear what this resolution is about. The real question before the House is whether three individuals who were subpoenaed as witnesses by the Committee on Resources should serve up to a year in prison for violating a Federal criminal 9tatute. As is the case with all criminal statutes. the three individuals cannot be convicted of Contempt of Congress unless guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Before we consider a resolution that could subject three citizens to criminal jeopardy. lets look carefully at the case the committee has brought before the House. The courts have held the congressional process in strict scrutiny. and in 1983 acquitted the last person charged by the House with contempt. In this investigation. the Committee Republicans have repeatedly failed to follow the House Rules. For over a year. they ignored House Rule Xl governing investigations despite Democratic objections. They further violated House Rules by curbing the rights of Democratic members to question witnesses at hearings. They abused those witnesses by. among other things. not allowing them to make opening statements at hearings. despite Democratic objections. One Republican member called the Department of the Interior employee a "common thief prior to his appearance before the committee. In short. as we detail in the Dissenting Views. this partisan investigation has been biased. unfair. and was a rogue operation that violated the Rules of the House and of the committee. Moreover. the committee Republicans failed to demonstrateeither to the witnesses or the Democratic membersa clear nexus between the questions and the purpose of the investigation. Specifically. they failed to establish a foundation for the questions that make them "pertinent" for purposes of applying the contempt statute to refusals to answer. And the courts have insisted that questions must be "pertinent" at the time they are asked of a witness at a hearing. After the fact rationale is not sufficient. My point in mentioning the procedural flaws in the committee investigation is to show that there are many reasons for members to be very cautious before concluding that these three citizens are guilty of Contempt of Congress. And unless members are convinced that the committees process can withstand judicial scrutiny and the statutory elements of contempt have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. then they should not vote for this resolution. �