Posted on 10/06/2004 5:40:35 AM PDT by OESY
The House Ethics Committee has just admonished Tom DeLay for the sin of twisting the arm of a reluctant fellow Republican to vote for last year's mega-super-ultra Medicare expansion. If only that were the Majority Leader's real offense.
The House ethicists were distressed, if only mildly so, that Mr. DeLay offered a political favor to Michigan Congressman Nick Smith in return for a "yes" vote on the Medicare prescription-drug bill....
The Committee at least had the honesty to admit that this sort of horse-trading happens all the time on Capitol Hill. But then it rose in high dudgeon to pronounce in 64 pages that political support for a Member's relative "goes beyond the boundaries of party discipline and should not be used as the basis of a bargain." We await similar ethics probes into other vote-buying rituals, such as trading a yea for a court house or highway. If the ethicists really got serious, the Appropriations Committees might have to go out of business.
More amusing still, the House ethicists came down even harder on Mr. Smith for talking about Mr. DeLay's offer in public. They are alarmed that his candor "impugned the reputation of the House," as if every American doesn't already know how political grease makes their world go 'round....
If the Members really cared about legislative ethics, they'd point out that the real outrage is the Medicare expansion bill itself....
That Mr. DeLay was the midwife for this huge expansion of government is especially ironic. The former small businessman from Sugar Land, Texas, came to Washington professing to limit the burdens that the Beltway imposes on Americans....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The Wall Street Journal (opinion page only) show prep ( a lot like us on FreeRepublic) for Rush Limbaugh.
My only complaint (now that we live out here in the woods) is that I now must get the WSJ by mail.
I would like to know when the sanctions on John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are coming for the insurance campaingn fraud on the Tunnel Projects in Boston Ma.
It cost over 10 billion in overruns from federal taxes.
OPs4 God BLess America!
Shocked, I tell you. I am shocked!
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