WASHINGTON -- April 27 -- Common Cause is gratified by press reports today that Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) is considering rescinding rules changes pushed through the House in January that made it much harder to launch an ethics investigation against a member of Congress.

However, the only acceptable outcome will be for the House to repeal all the rules changes. Rolling back only some of the rules will not work. That is the message that we sent in a letter today to Speaker Hastert, as well as Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), chairman of the Ethics Committee, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), the senior Democrat on the Ethics Committee, as well as Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

The three changes that must be rescinded are: Allowing a complaint to be dismissed when the Ethics Committee, evenly split between both parties, deadlocks; allowing a complaint to be dismissed if not acted upon in 45 days; and allowing the same lawyer to represent both the subject of a complaint and witnesses.

If the previous rules are restored, the House will still have only a minimally functional Ethics Committee. But it can at least begin investigating questions that have been raised about Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and other members regarding the financing of overseas junkets.

More broadly, the House needs a bipartisan task force to review the system of monitoring House ethics and to recommend improvements to bring accountability back to one of our most democratic of institutions.

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