By David Hess
Thomas Voting Reports

(Editor’s Note: This report was released Jan. 27, 2006, for publication by our newspaper subscribers. It was later edited into the past tense and posted here.)

Republican leaders in control of Congress rushed congressional ethics to the top of the 2006 legislative calendar, giving House members and senators an early chance to cast votes on the clean side of the issue in this election year.

But how lawmakers of both parties ultimately were to be judged back home also depended on ethics stands they took long before an unfolding scandal involving figures such as lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and former Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney, R-Ohio, burst into public view.

House GOP leaders, with their new proposal to restrict members' acceptance of lobbyists' travel and other perks, appeared to be taking a major U-turn from their actions in 2005 to loosen ethics oversight.

On Jan. 4, 2005, the opening day of the 109th Congress, the House adopted a GOP-drafted rule making it more difficult for the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, or ethics committee, to investigate charges against members. In a 222-196 party-line vote, Republicans killed a Democratic bid to block the change.

Democrats said the new rule was crafted to protect DeLay against yet another formal rebuke by the committee. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., called it "an obvious attempt to protect one man from further prosecution or investigation by the ethics committee." But Republicans said they were standing up for the due process rights of any member under committee scrutiny. The change "restores the presumption of innocence," said Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif.

Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., then sacked three of the GOP members of the ethics committee, including the chairman, all of whom had voted earlier to rebuke DeLay, and replaced them with DeLay allies.

Public outcry ensued, and on April 27, 2005, GOP leaders moved to restore the ethics committee rule they had just repealed. The reinstatement was approved, 406-20. Both the January and April votes are included in this report on 35 of the most newsworthy roll calls in Congress in 2005. Overall, the House conducted 671 record votes in 2005 and the Senate 366.

Beyond ethics, this report spotlights topics such as Iraq, the USA Patriot Act, energy, torture, the Terri Schiavo case, stem-cell research, weapons in space, "earmarked" appropriations, Social Security and Amtrak.

The report also covers signature GOP issues such as changing the bankruptcy code, cutting taxes, curbing entitlements and restraining class actions, along with Democratic staples such as raising the minimum wage, addressing global warming and funding international family-planning groups.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., charged Republicans with "a spectacular failure" in 2005 "to respond to the real needs of the country. What people are most concerned about are gas prices, the loss of [health] insurance coverage and the loss of pensions as jobs go off to other countries." Obey also criticized GOP leaders for "neglecting to hold President Bush to account for that God-awful mess in Iraq, the dumbest war since 1812."

But Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, applauded the Republican record. "We passed an energy bill, after years of trying, that could help lower our dependence on foreign oil. We finally passed a highway construction bill after several tries. We got a Central American Free Trade Agreement.

We provided tens of billions for Hurricane Katrina relief. And the economy is humming." "We've had a pretty effective Congress, even though we've gotten very little credit for it," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. He cited achievements such as adoption of a budget resolution that calls for $40 billion in spending savings and yet-to-be-enacted tax cuts of about $60 billion over five years.

But Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., said the GOP package of $40 billion in entitlement curbs and $60 billion in tax cuts "really means the federal deficit will be worse, not better." And the tax cuts amounted to "manna for the rich, crumbs for the middle class," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.