Washington – The Colorado lawmaker replaced as leader of the House ethics committee after it rebuked the body’s No. 2 Republican suspects that congressional corruption will continue despite reform efforts.
“You never can make enough rules to stop people who really are intent on breaking the rules,” said Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colorado Springs. “We will make a flurry to convince the American public that we’re making these sweeping changes that are going to solve the problem.
“To me that’s show and tell and may not amount to anything,” he said. “Those who are intent on violating the rules will figure a way to violate the rules.”
The House ethics committee under Hefley’s chairmanship in 2004 admonished then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, three times, a move that some believe cost Hefley the chairmanship. The 10-term congressman was removed as committee chief a short time later. Republican leaders said Hefley’s term of service was over.
Hefley’s comments on ethics came as a Senate committee today examined scandals involving lobbyists and lawmakersSenators began introducing legislation to tighten gift and travel rules.
Also today, Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., joined two other senators in calling for an independent committee to recommend changes needed to improve ethics “compliance and enforcement” in Congress.
Hefley, 71, plans to introduce his own reforms, including a ban on accepting any gift from a lobbyist. Other lawmakers are proposing everything from banning all privately-funded travel; lowering the value of gifts lawmakers can accept from $50 cq to $20 cq; and forbidding lawmakers to fly on charter jets usually funded by lobbyists unless the lawmaker pays his or her own way.
Those are intended to prevent such scandals as the accusation that DeLay flew to Scotland and played golf on a junket arranged by then-lobbyist Jack Abramoff cq, who has since pleaded guilty to bribery and fraud.
From his seat chairing the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for four years, Hefley said he saw the inevitability of Congress’ current ethics problems. While most lawmakers follow the rules, he said, the same people consistently either broke or bent the rules.
“You knew that it was going on,” he said. “You knew about some of it. You certainly knew that you didn’t know about all of it.”
Punishments included making people pay back trips that they should not have taken, he said. Those paybacks are not made public, and Hefley did not say which lawmakers fell into such trouble.
That lack of disclosure is one of the problems that makes it hard to stop corruption, said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Hefley “saw the same people over and over again, which means that the enforcement process is broken,” Noble said.
For rules to work, he said, the punishment needs to be made public and should escalate, starting with financial penalties and increasing to criminal penalties.
