HOUSE RULES

Last fall, the U.S. House Ethics Committee was asked a question that at the time seemed to straddle the line between fine-tuning and nitpicking: Were the gifts of food – pizza, Chinese takeout and the like – lobbyists often sent to the offices of congressional staff working late subject to the $100 annual limit for gifts valued at less than $50 from one giver to one member, or could the value of the food be divvied up among the staffers who consumed it? The committee’s answer was that the 1995 gift rule clearly put the matter in the one- giver-one-member category; divvying up was an artifice designed to thwart the intent of the rule.

Last week, one of the first acts of the new House was to take that advisory opinion and discard it with the same disdain shown for empty pizza boxes. Employing accounting no doubt learned at Enron’s knee, the comprehensive rules package adopted includes enhanced divvying – not only can the value of a given meal be divided among the number of staff who ate it, but the total annual value of these gifts can be apportioned among the total number of a member’s staff, whether or not they eat any of it. Suddenly, for a member with a 20-person staff, the $100 annual limit bloats to $2,000. Forget pizza; pass the caviar.

The 1995 rules, ushered through by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in response to the many influence-peddling scandals in the early 1990s, did not stop at minor gifts of food; also banned were gifts from special interests to members of all-expenses-paid luxury vacations, such as free travel and lodging for charitable fund-raising golf or tennis tournaments. The 2003 rules still prohibit the special interest from picking up the tab for face time in Palm Springs directly. Instead, in an Enronesque way, the special interest has to take the extra step of making a donation to the charity with the condition that the charity invites the favored member of Congress as its guest.

This was ushered through by Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay, buried deep within the comprehensive rules package and passed, on a straight party-line vote, with no advance notice and little debate. It now is up to the rank and file to reopen the package and put these rules that rule nothing out where they belong, with the empty pizza boxes.