Committee Funding Resolution

Floor Speech

COMMITTEE FUNDING RESOLUTION -- (House of Representatives - March 08, 2007)

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Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak against the rule and the underlying bill as it is currently written. Frankly, my concerns are not about the global warming issue. It is about the ethics issue.

As a former member of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, I understand and appreciate the tremendously difficult job that we ask the staff and the members of that committee to face on a daily basis. It is common knowledge in this body that no one wants to serve on the Ethics Committee. It is a responsibility that no one seeks but, frankly, must be handled.

I think, frankly, everyone understands that there have been ethical lapses by some of our colleagues in the last few years. That committee has dealt with those lapses as best it could, handling a workload that is unpredictable, and it is by its very nature highly charged and occasionally and unfortunately partisan.

To do that job, the last Congress increased the funding for the committee by approximately 40 percent. Even that was probably not enough to handle the job which had been given to us by the House, but it is certainly not enough to deal with the new responsibilities that the majority has chosen to extend to that committee.

The majority party ran on a platform of ethics and made it a major issue in the last campaign, and frankly, it passed with strong, bipartisan support an ethics package as the very first act that calls, again, on Members to do more in the committee to supervise and do more.

Now the majority party is actually refusing to do what they promised; that is, they are refusing to fund the 41 percent increase in the underlying legislation that their own chairman of the Ethics Committee and the ranking member have jointly requested.

We have been able to find millions of dollars to fund the global warming effort, a select committee, a committee, frankly, that has no duties, no responsibilities, no legislative priorities, but it is an important committee, and I recognize the importance of looking at that extremely important issue. At the same time, we will not fund a committee that already has the smallest budget of any standing committee, whose responsibilities we have magnified, compounded and increased greatly.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle again made ethics a major issue in the last campaign, and frankly, they have threatened to make it a major issue in the next campaign. Fair enough. I think everybody should be scrutinized that is privileged to serve in this body, but if you are going to do that, you have to give the committee the financial resources to do the job that it is charged to do, and frankly, you have to provide the Members of this body with the services that they need to avoid inadvertently breaking the rules and becoming the target for political cheap shots, whether they are launched by one side or the other.

It is simply irresponsible to the Members of this body. I am not surprised that our friends on the other side of the aisle do not want to yield us some more time to talk about this simply because they are in an indefensible position.

Do the right thing: Vote against this hollow rule and give the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct the funding it needs to get its job done.

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