WASHINGTON — A House vote Thursday highlighted the continuing paralysis of the chamber's ethics committee, six weeks after lawmakers thought they had ended an impasse that was keeping the panel from opening an investigation focusing on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
Republicans easily defeated a resolution by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) that was intended as a rebuke of the panel's chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), whom Democrats accuse of trying to politicize the committee's staff.
Democrats oppose Hastings' effort to install his staff director as the committee's chief of staff, a move they say violates panel rules that call for a nonpartisan staff.
Pelosi's resolution was tabled -- effectively killed -- by a 219-199 party-line vote. Democrats immediately accused Republicans of having damaged the credibility of a panel whose effectiveness rests on its impartiality. Republicans dismissed the Pelosi resolution as a political stunt.
But the vote also underscored how both parties have hardened their positions in the increasingly bitter dispute over how the House ethics committee should operate.
The standoff has not only thwarted an expected investigation into some of DeLay's overseas trips, but has also left the House with no means of policing itself.
"As this political fight is taking place, American citizens are waiting for this committee to weigh in on lobbying, trips" and other issues such as campaign financing, said Alex Knott, an official at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group that studies public policy. "These guys can't make decisions on basic staffing issues."
Other congressional watchdog organizations say the deadlock bolsters their calls for an independent counsel to examine questions about DeLay, whom the groups say the Republican-controlled House cannot credibly investigate.
The ethics committee "for all practical purposes doesn't exist," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, one of the watchdog groups.
Republicans and Democrats agree that the situation has damaged the House's credibility. But each party blames the other.
The staffing fight involving the ethics committee has proved intractable, strategists for both parties say, because of the political stakes of an investigation into DeLay.
