16 minutes ago
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert urged fellow Republicans on Wednesday to abandon new rules that led to an ethics committee shutdown and his members appeared ready to follow him in retreat.
"I'm willing to step back," Hastert said after a closed-door meeting with members of the GOP rank and file. Republicans prepared for a vote as early as Wednesday evening.
The Republican lawmakers have endured weeks of intense Democratic criticism and hometown editorials complaining about GOP rule changes that critics have seen as an attempt to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay from further investigation.
DeLay was admonished by the committee on three separate matters last year and new questions have been raised about whether a lobbyist paid for some of his foreign travel in violation of the rules.
The ethics rules in effect before the January changes allowed investigations to begin if the committee was evenly divided. The Republican changes provided for an automatic dismissal in case of a tie.
Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., who supported the retreat, said the GOP move "doesn't mean Democrats will stop going after DeLay."
Hefley was dumped by Hastert as chairman of the evenly divided ethics committee after the panel admonished DeLay. He has been one of the few Republicans who opposed the Republican changes from the beginning.
Republican lawmakers, who would not be identified by name because their meeting was closed, said some didn't want to stop the fight, believing the party could still win the political battle to uphold the changes.
Despite the support for Hastert, Republicans have the politically sticky task of explaining their reversal after defending the rules changes for months.
In talking points prepared for the closed GOP meeting, Republican leaders said the GOP stood by the changes but believed it was more important "to have a functioning ethics committee that may be flawed" than a panel that couldn't function. Democrats have kept the committee of five Republicans and five Democrats deadlocked by refusing to provide any votes to start operations.
Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the committee, said, "To this point the speaker's actions have been positive. The proposal will be considered and evaluated by the bipartisan yardstick."
At the same time, Mollohan and aides to Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi insisted that committee staff must be hired on a bipartisan basis. Republicans early this year unilaterally fired two holdover staff members.
Hastert bristled at talk of Democrats dictating committee staffing. "If they get one thing, they'll want another," he said in a brief interview.
"We raised their staffing. They have the ability to hire more staff," he added, referring to a large increase in the committee's budget.
Pelosi, the Democratic leader, told reporters that Republicans had decided to retreat under pressure. "I think they just took the heat," she said. "I think there has been an editorial in every paper in the country saying this is wrong."
Republicans have denied that the rules changes were designed with DeLay in mind, and Hastert told reporters outside the meeting Wednesday that his intention had been to create a new set of rules that was fair to all lawmakers, regardless of party. Given Democratic criticism, he said, "I'm willing to step back."
"We need to move forward with an ethics process," he added.
Referring to DeLay, Hastert said that one prominent Republican needed a functioning ethics committee because "right now he can't clear his name."
