Date: 2005-02-09
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. very often when we are out among the people we represent and holding town hall meetings and meeting with various organizations. we are asked the question. Why do you not run the government like a business? Unfortunately. today. there is some evidence that we are running it like a business. but we are running it like some of the worst businesses in America. Today. what we see. as the Republicans gain seats in the House of Representatives. as the Republicans get more and more control of the House of Representatives. there is less and less space for honest debate in the House. There are less opportunities for the minority to offer amendments. to offer bipartisan changes to legislation to come to the floor. If we put together abipartisan coalition that the Republican leadership does not like. they simply are not allowed to offer that amendment. This is at a time when young men and women are dying to bring democracy to Afghanistan and to Iraq. and yet we cannot find that democracy on the floor of the House of Representatives. It does appear. as the old saying says. that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. and that is the situation we have come to. We now have the House that has an ethics process that reeks of favoritism. reeks of conflicts of interest. reeks of punishment of those who dare to look at the evidence and make an independent judgment. We now see that those individuals are taken off the committee. The chairman of the committee is sacked for no apparent reason. There was a unanimous vote in the committee in the last session of the Congress three times to admonish the majority leader of the House. The committee apparently looked at the evidence. listened to the witnesses. and on a unanimous basis decided that that action was warranted. We then see that those individuals who participated. or several of those individuals. including the chairman who participated in that unanimous decision. were taken off the committee. This starts to look like the businesses that have terrified the American people. the Enrons. the WorldComs. where we see what happens is the CEO starts to appoint his friends to the board of directors. They start to cook the books. they start to steal the shareholders money. they start to mislead the investment communities. What we see here is that apparently the majority leader did not like the outcome of the actions by the Committee on Standards of Official Con-. duct. and so they started to change the rules. There apparently i. some anticipation that the majority leader could be subject to an indictment out of the State of Texas. As a result of that. there was an effort to change the rules. and in fact. the rules were changed within the Republican Caucus to say that. if indicted. that leader could continue to serve. or a leader in the position of leadership could continue to serve. Of course. that was a voice vote and a secret caucus. When that vote was exposed to daylight. when they found out that vote was going to be challenged by our side of the aisle. by the Democrats in the House. they. of course. changed that action because it would not stand up under scrutiny. but they did not do anything. Unlike the old rules. the investigation would have proceeded because the committee is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. It would have proceeded. Now. unless one person from one party or another crosses the party lines and agrees to the investigation. the investigation dies. We now have the situation where the party that may have somebody under investigation. in effect. has a veto. That is not the ethics process that the public is entitled to or the Members of the House are entitled to. We now see that that is the rules of the House. We now also see that in the replacement of the Members of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. we have two Members of the committee who have contributed to the defense fund for the majority leader. If they are called upon to undertake an investigation. because apparently that matter is still pending before the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. they will be in a position of havfng to decide whether to proceed or not. and they have already cast their vote with their contribution to that defense fund. So we now have a Committee on Standards of Official Conduct that is severely conflicted with respect to its duty to the people of the country and to the Members of this House. Mr. Speaker. this is not what the peoples House should look like. This is not how the peoples business should be done. whether it is about allowing space for true and honest political debate. as many Members on the floor today earlier argued for the ability to talk about the asylum provisions in the bill that we will vote tomorrow. but the time was not allotted to do that. The time was not allotted to have that kind of discussion that affects so many people. Why did they do that? Because they do not want the discussion. As our colleague. the gentleman from Massachusetts . said. it appears that they know they can win the vote. they just do not believe they can win the debate. Time and again we see that happening. As severe as that problem is with respect to closing down democracy in the House. the changing and the corrupting of the ethics process is far more severe because our first obligation is to make sure that Congress does. in fact. do its business in an ethical fashion. not in a corrupt fashion. and that Members of Congress are held to an ethical standard that justifies their support by the people of their districts.