Jack Kingston: “we need to ask ourselves every now and then in a moment of truth on a bipartisan basis what this House is doing. Ethics…”

“we need to ask ourselves every now and then in a moment of truth on a bipartisan basis what this House is doing. Ethics rules should be there to prosecute somebody who has broken them. The same rules should be there to protect somebody who is innocent. The Democrat members on the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct do not want to meet. They do not want to give the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) due process. They do not want to give him an up- or-down vote. They are very content to discuss it with their allies at The Washington Post or the New York Times. They do not want to talk about how many educational trips they have been on with their families, although there is a list. They do not want to talk about how many of their family members work in their campaigns and are reimbursed and on their campaign payroll, but there is a list. {time} 1030 Is this what the Democrats really want? I think that the Democrats would be serving this House well if they would say to their ethics committee members, we want you to meet. We want due process for Tom DeLay or any other Member who may have a question about things. Right now we cannot address that because they will not come to the meetings. I ask my Democrat colleagues to do the right thing, let us move on with the ethics process and take the politics out of this, because there are a lot of questions on both sides of the aisle right now, and the House is being underserved by this committee. ____________________”