Breaking the rules: as Congress frets over Clinton, two of its most ethically challenged Republicans are getting off scot-free - Tom DeLay and Bud Schuster

Washington Monthly, June, 1997 by Nurith C. Aizenman

While Ruskin was starring in his own private version of Death of a Salesman, the folks at Common Cause were trying the different -- but equally fruitless -- approach of urging the Ethics Committee to open its own inquiry into Shuster. The committee can (and, once in a blue moon, does) initiate complaints against members. But in this case the request was greeted with deafening silence.

Common Cause's Meredith McGehee was disappointed, but hardly shocked. If the general membership of the House is reluctant to pursue their colleagues, members of the Ethics Committee regard the prospect with horror. It's hard to blame them. Once an investigation is in full swing, the Ethics members are in the unenviable position of having to dig up dirt on the same people with whom they must trade favors and votes in the course of their other business. Not surprisingly, Ethics is the only committee which members actively lobby not to be on. "It is the least desired assignment in Congress," says Rep. Ben Cardin, formerly the ranking Democrat on Ethics. "No one serves on this committee by choice." Those who do get corralled into service are usually bribed with plum assignments on the Appropriations or Ways and Means Committees. And Ethics is almost always the last committee to be filled.

Not only did the Ethics Committee decline to investigate Shuster, but its chairwoman, Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), pushed the committee to exonerate him. In February of 1996, Shuster released the transcript of a conversation he had recently had with an Ethics Committee staffer and tried to claim that it somehow absolved him. It didn't. Shuster had been short on specifics and had only been asking about future actions under newly passed rules. And even if he had been asking about his past actions, oral advice is not an acceptable substitute for the prior written waiver members must obtain to get around the gift rule. Nonetheless,johnson sought to have the committee write a letter which would memorialize its conversations with Shuster. This was too much for the Democrats, who charged that, at Shuster's urging, Johnson was trying to force through an after-the-fact written waiver to shield him from subsequent inquiry. After much wrangling, the committee produced its compromise: a bizarre letter to Shuster which was "not intended to express approval or disapproval of any actions you have taken in the past," but instead contained "the committee's general guidelines on the issues raised." Ironically, a reading of the letter would seem to indicate that Shuster had indeed violated the rules. Yet Shuster bandied the letter about as if it cleared him. As for DeLay, he was completely off the radar.

Hurry Up & Wait

By September, Gary Ruskin was beginning to lose hope. After seven months of going door-to-door, he had yet to collect a single signature -- and the deadline for complaints (which must be filed 60 days before an election) was fast approaching. Then, at the last minute, he had a breakthrough. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Calif.) agreed to sign a letter of refusal for both the Shuster and DeLay cases. "Now there's a man with a vertebrae!" exulted Ruskin. Retiring Democrats Patricia Schroeder and Pat Williams quickly followed suit on the Shuster complaint. And Representatives Robert Matsui (D-Calif.) and Thomas Barrett (D-Wis.) signed off on DeLay. Hours before the deadline, Ruskin rushed into the Ethics Committee with his completed complaints. "That was a crazy day!" he remembers.