Mr. MARTIN. As I recall, the Rules Committee in suggesting that amendment last year, sought to safeguard the rights of the Members themselves. It Mr. BENNETT. That would be thoroughly acceptable to me. would be acceptable to myself and I think it would be to the committee as a whole. The only reason it is the other way is because this resolution before you today is 100 percent the same resolution the House passed with the single tiny exception of inserting the ability to recommend censure in proper cases. Mr. MARTIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. BOLLING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bennett, at the bottom of page 2 of your resolution, the paragraph that begins—it is under section (b)— The select committee shall have power to make an investigation of any violation by a Member, officer, employee of the House of standards of conduct established by the House of Representatives by law or resolution, including those standards provided as title 18, United States Code, and in the concurrent resolution passed July 11, 1958. I would like to be reminded what was in that concurrent resolution. Mr. BENNETT. That is the "Code of Ethics for Government Service." Mr. BOLLING. And that includes the Congress? Do you have a copy of that around? Mr. BENNETT. It is in the report of the committee. I usually carry a wallet-sized one in my wallet, but I don't have my wallet with me. Mr. BOLLING. I was asking this because of something in the colloquy between the chairman and Mr. Bennett, and I think it is worth reading this "Code of Ethics for Government Service": Any person in Government service should: 1. Put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party or Government department. 2. Uphold the Constitution, laws and legal regulations of the United States and of all governments therein and never be a party to their evasion. 3. Give a full day's labor for a full day's pay; giving to the performance of his duties his earnest effort and best thought. 4. Seek to find and employ more efficient and economical ways of getting tasks accomplished. 5. Never discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not; and never accept, for himself or his family, favors or benefits under circumstances which might be construed by reasonable persons as influencing the performance of his governmental duties. 6. Make no private promises of any kind binding upon the duties of office, since a Government employee has no private word which can be binding on public duty. 7. Engage in no business with the Government, either directly or indirectly, which is inconsistent with the conscientious performance of his governmental duties. 8. Never use any information coming to him confidentially in the performance of governmental duties as a means for making private profit. 9. Expose corruption wherever discovered. 10. Uphold these principles, ever conscious that public office is a public trust. The thing that worries me today, as it did then, about this code of ethics for Government service is, first, its vagueness-because it really is, as I understand it, a readoption of the Ten Commandments with a little addenda; and, second, the effectiveness it may or may not have had since its adoption. Now, I am sort of curious as to what would happen, having studied this matter somewhat carefully, if there was an attempt to do as this section says, make an investigation of any violation by a Member, officer, employee of the House, particularly in connection with "loyalty to the highest moral principles above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department." That is what this says and that is what this would do in this resolution; is that correct? Mr. BENNETT. That is correct. Mr. BOLLING. I was curious about that. Mr. BENNETT. Let me say this. This illustrates the difficulty of coming out with a code of ethics, because this code of ethics was drafted by about 40 or 50 Members of Congress and this was in 1949 or 1950. It took about from 1949 or 1950 to 1958 to get it passed, and it was worked over by several sessions of Congress. Extensive hearings were had on it, and commas put in, commas taken out, words changed here and words changed there, and it is not an easy thing at all to get a code of ethics for Government service or any other code of ethics for anybody drafted, which has this implication to try to help standards in the field other than statutory criminal law. That is the reason when the chairman asked me about this, I said to him that I am not very sanguine about-very optimistic about drawing up codes of ethics. This is not an easy thing to do at all, because when you have a code of ethics, unless it is criminal law, you have admittedly said it is going to be in a gray area and subject to all kinds of interpretations. I know the chairman is looking at the clock. I would like to say one thing about this code of ethics. It has not been a useless thing. The Civil Service Commission has many times referred to this as being a very helpful thing in the executive branch of the Government, so it has been a worthwhile thing. It has never been applied to the House of Representatives, but if there is an objection to the vagueness of this, that would be easily done by just striking that language relative to resolutions and you could just say-just stop right there when it says the standards established by the House of Representatives by law. That would be stopped at page 25 where it says "by law" and just strike the rest of that sentence after "law." This is not a law, this is just a resolution. It was passed by the House and the Senate, but it was not a law. So you could strike that and there would be no great harm done by that if you want to do that. I have no objection to doing that. I would think, however, the committee might want to think about the possibility there might be a desire to leave some power of oversight in this field and if you do not have some general provisions like this, you would not have such oversight. But if you feel the committee might be likely to go down all kinds of cul-de-sacs and do things it should not do, it would be a simple thing just to strike all words after "by law,' to strike out "or resolution including" and I don't think this would impair the activities of the committee. And I would have no objection to removing it if you want to remove it. Mr. BOLLING. Mr. Chairman, I have one comment I would like to make. The impression, I think, has been left in the record that there are only two ways of establishing a committee with full jurisdiction and directing that committee to do certain things. One would be through the Madden committee recommendations, and the other would be through the establishment by resolution of a select or standing committee, much like Mr. Bennett's. There is a third way, a simple way, and it does not take two-thirds vote. All it would require would be a resolution from the Rules Committee to amend rule XI, section 9, which establishes the Committee on House Administration, and give it the same jurisdiction as was given to the select committee. That then would be reenforced in the same resolution by a directive to the Committee on House Administration containing, I think, somewhat tightened-up language, virtually identical, to all the language which appears in Mr. Bennett's resolution, starting with section 2 on line 11 of page 2, and proceeding as far as and much as one wished to proceed. This would be a resolution from the Rules Committee. It would be privileged; it probably could be gotten to the floor faster than anything else. It could be acted on and you would have a directive to the Committee on House Administration which would be very clear and very specific. In this resolution, the select committee is only authorized. The third suggestion-the third possibility is for the Congress to direct the House Administration Committee to take jurisdiction. Mr. BENNETT. If I might briefly respond to this. The only reason why I said it took a two-thirds vote is because an opponent of this committee, the House select committee, who was trying to frankly work up some way to defeat this committee, told me he thought it would take a two-thirds vote. I did not believe it myself; I felt if an enemy of the committee said it took a two-thirds vote, I figured it would. I must say in my main testimony, I don't want to go back over this, due to the record of the House Administration Committee over things it has had jurisdiction over for years, and has been directed to operate in this field, in my opinion giving this matter to the House Administration Committee will be an affront to the American public, because I think they want a full operating committee that will look into this matter fully and come forth with recommendations and operate in a way they should. The record as it was written by the very able Congressman from Ohio is replete with illustrations of where this committee has known, it not only knew but had administrative responsibility in this field, it had to approve the checks, and the law was to the contrary and it approved the checks, so I don't think the American public is going to take very happily to sweeping this under the rug. Mr. BOLLING. I would make a comment that the gentleman would certainly have his right to an opinion, but I would submit, though I have not firmly made up my mind on that, that I have been writing about reforming Congress a good deal more than most, excepting the chairman. Mr. ANDERSON of Illinois. As you can see, however, with this directive, you have a committee composed along partisan lines, whereas the gentleman from Florida is suggesting the creation of a select bipartisan committee. Mr. BOLLING. I excepted the bipartisan nature of the committee when it was up before last year; I happen to believe a certain element of party responsibility and I think standards of conduct and ethics are a matter of party responsibility, too. The CHAIRMAN. Just a moment. There are about a dozen resolutions from this committee down on the floor that are to be taken up and I am advised that, just as soon as the 1-minute speeches are over, the leadership will propose to take those resolutions up, and practically every member of this committee has one of them. Now, what the Chair would like to ask the gentlemen of the committee is what the desire of the committee is. Now we have, as I pointed out earlier, a large number of resolutions and a substantial number of Members of Congress who want to be heard on these resolutions. Would the committee like to come back after these resolutions are disposed of on the floor, or shall we meet tomorrow, or what is the desire of the committee? (Discussion off the record.) The CHAIRMAN. On the record. Let me point out further to the committee that we have resolutions to be passed. I wonder if we could settle this in executive session and notify the people. All right, the committee will go into executive session. (Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the committee adjourned in order to go into executive session.) |