Barack Obama

Hastert, Obama set to collide over ethics panel

Friday, February 17, 2006

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
BY LYNN SWEET SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday that the Republican leader is dead set against a proposal by Sen. Barack Obama to create an independent panel to probe ethics complaints.

Hastert's strong resistance to a plan Obama (D-Ill.) wants to make the centerpiece of his ethics crackdown puts the two Illinoisans on a collision course.

"He is against having a private investigating panel,'' Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said.

"It makes no sense,'' Bonjean said. Instead, Hastert believes allegations of wrongdoing can be handled by members in the ethics committee -- though the House ethics committee has been dormant for the last year.

I asked Bonjean if Hastert's opposition was negotiable.

"No,'' he said.

Neither the House nor the Senate has activist ethics committees to police its own members. House Republicans and Democrats blame each other for procedural roadblocks that have prevented the House committee from functioning.

Obama was named by Democrats last month to be a lead spokesman on ethics and lobbying reform after the guilty plea of GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Obama wants to create a Congressional Ethics Enforcement Commission with subpoena power to probe ethics allegations. Four commissioners would be former federal judges, four former members of Congress and the ninth a wild card.

On Thursday, Obama hosted a press conference about his commission plan. While that event had a partisan peg, later Obama went to a meeting with GOP senators, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), to see if there was common ground.

A coalition of good-government groups also wants some kind of outside policing.

But Hastert has an ally on this one -- someone he does not often work with.

And that's John McCain. His spokeswoman said McCain prefers that Congress discipline its own.