Texas Congressman Tom DeLay may soon be indicted by a state grand jury on political corruption charges. Some of Delay’s closest allies have already been charged.
Rules in the US House of Representatives required that members of Congress in leadership positions must step down if they are indicted on criminal matters. Delay is the Republican Majority Leader. The rules were put in place when the Republicans took over Congress in 1995.
Today the Republicans changed those rules to allow DeLay to keep his post even if indicted. The reason? Payback. Many Republican members of the House owe their jobs to DeLay who campaigned for them and raised enormous amounts of cash.
"Each party has the right to set its own governing rules," Common Cause said in a statement, issued with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Campaign Money Watch. "But this change to reward Rep. DeLay for his tactics in using redistricting to create five new House seats for Republicans does nothing for the public good. In fact, it tells the public that Republicans' attitude, when it comes to ethics, is "Do as I say, not as I do." And it only serves to produce greater cynicism among citizens who see politicians concerned only with protecting their own."
The groups noted the irony that 11 years ago, House Republicans adopted the same rule scrapped Wednesday in an effort to draw attention to Democrats' ethical problems. In fact, Rep. DeLay himself was a key player in calling for those tougher ethics standards. Common Cause for months has been shining the light on Rep. DeLay's unethical behavior, which has been bad enough to illicit multiple admonishments from the House Ethics Committee, which until recently has sat mostly dormant for seven years. Common Cause has called on Rep. Delay to step down as majority leader, since his ethical behavior makes him unfit to lead in Congress, and also teamed with CREW to call for an outside counsel to investigate ethics complaints filed against Rep. DeLay.
Click here to visit the Common Cause web site and keep track of the corruption under way in Congress this week.
Aren't these the guys elected to protect moral values?
