THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 1997 TAG: 9701220392
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 103 lines
The House of Representatives voted Tuesday to reprimand Speaker Newt Gingrich and fine him $300,000, agreeing with its ethics committee that he first brought discredit on the House by using tax-exempt money to promote Republican goals and then gave the committee untrue information for its inquiry.
The most severe rebuke ever visited on the presiding officer of the House in its 208-year history - indeed, the only vote the House had ever taken to impose a sanction against any speaker - came on a 395-28 vote after 90 intense minutes of debate.
Most Republicans who spoke were hard on their leader; the Democrats were harder. Only a handful, all Republicans, defended him.
There were 196 Republicans, 198 Democrats and 1 independent who supported the penalty. Twenty-six Republicans and two Democrats were opposed and five Democrats merely voted ``present.''
The two Democrats who opposed the penalties were Reps. Earl F. Hilliard of Alabama and Gene Taylor of Mississippi. Taylor said the measure should have specified the $300,000 come from personal funds, not campaign coffers or a legal expense fund. Hilliard did not return telephone calls.
``The penalty is tough and unprecedented,'' ethics committee Chairwoman Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., said.
Republicans and Democrats agreed that Gingrich had done wrong - indeed he had admitted it - but they clashed over the gravity of his misbehavior.
``Newt has done some things that have embarrassed House Republicans and embarrassed the House,'' said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. ``If (the voters) see more of that, they will question our judgment.''
Gingrich was not present to hear Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., say he ``is not to be believed'' in declaring that his violations were unintentional, or to hear Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the Republican whip, defend him by saying, ``What he's charged with today is - during the process, he happened to screw up.''
One theme that pervaded the debate was the Republican hope that once this action was taken, it would not only end the 28-month investigation of Gingrich but also enable the House to ``bring a halt to the crippling partisanship and animosity that has surrounded us,'' ethics panel chairman Johnson said.
The vote ends the House's consideration of these charges against Gingrich. But there are other charges pending against him, among them that he used his political action committee, GOPAC, as a personal slush fund. In addition, the ethics committee has made its evidence on the tax issues available to the Internal Revenue Service.
Further, the issues voted on Tuesday could resurface if Gingrich chooses to use campaign funds to pay his fine, as he has used them to pay his legal bills. Pelosi said that while the $300,000 penalty ``speaks eloquently to the American people,'' his use of campaign funds to satisfy it would increase their cynicism about Washington.
As for ``whether the speaker remains speaker,'' Pelosi said, that ``is up to the Republicans.''
``He is technically eligible,'' she said. ``I hope you will make a judgment as to whether he is ethically fit.''
Gingrich stayed out of sight while the House debated and voted on his reprimand.
He was in his office attending meetings and did not watch the proceedings on TV, his spokeswoman, Lauren Maddox, said. There was no written statement from his office.
Earlier Tuesday, the speaker did appear at a closed meeting of Republican lawmakers and received a standing ovation, Maddox said. After the meeting, he ducked down a stairway to avoid the dozens of reporters and film crews waiting for him.
All four Hampton Roads congressmen joined in endorsing the record-setting penalty for Gingrich.
``Everybody likes to say this was very partisan,'' said Rep. Norman Sisisky, a Democrat whose district includes portions of Portsmouth, Chesapeake, and western Tidewater. ``The truth of the matter is (Gingrich) said he was guilty.''
And the speaker's violations of the House's ethical standards weren't just technical or inadvertent, Sisisky said.
Rep. Robert C. Scott, a Newport News Democrat whose district includes much of Norfolk and Portsmouth, said the Gingrich reprimand, along with ``the first six-figure sanction in the history of the U.S. Congress . . . puts his situation in perspective.''
``Some of his colleagues tried to sweep it under the rug as if it was jaywalking,'' but the reprimand was one of only eight such punishments in the history of the House and the financial penalty was more than seven times as large as the previous record of $40,000, Scott said.
And the final chapter in the case is yet to come, Scott added, as evidence amassed by the House Ethics Committee is passed along to the Internal Revenue Service. Prosecutors there ``will have a lot of material to work with,'' he said.
Scott and Sisisky said it is up to Republicans, who chose Gingrich to be speaker, to decide if they want him to continue in that post. ``I'm sure a lot of them, if they'd read that report (before last week's vote to retain Gingrich as speaker), wouldn't have voted the way they did,'' Sisisky said.
Scott, meanwhile, couldn't resist wondering aloud if ``there's not some other member of the Republican caucus who could serve as a better role model.''
The area's other two congressmen, Republican Herbert H. Bateman of Newport News, and Democrat Owen B. Pickett of Virginia Beach, were unavailable for comment. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times, The
Washington Post, The Associated Press and staff writer Dale Eisman.