Nancy Pelosi has some hard words for the Republican Congress as run by Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert. This is from her press conference and reported by The Stakeholder.
Q But the Democrats have complained about Mr. DeLay's ethics in the past. Are you shooting yourself in the foot, it is for a larger standard, but by holding up the Ethics Committee work?
Ms. Pelosi. The fact is that there is no Ethics Committee. It has been completely gutted by the Republicans. And this should be a cause of great outrage in the country. What the Republicans are saying is: "We are above the law. Because we are above the law, we may decide on our own to take the law into our own hands when it comes to your personal decisions in your lives, but for us, we are above the law."
So to depose the Chair of the Ethics Committee, to expel two members of the committee because they were thought to not be friendly to Mr. DeLay in the deliberations of last year, to fire the staff in a unilateral way, to change the rules, to gut them so that there effectively is no process, is a hoax, and I don't think the Democrats should participate in a hoax.
That's why I have brought a privileged resolution to the floor to call on the Speaker to put together a bipartisan task force to review the rules. If they don't like the rules, to review the rules so that we would have bipartisan agreement on what they would be. That is the way the Ethics Committee has always worked. So I don't think we're shooting ourselves in the foot. I think we're upholding high ethical standards.
Q Chairman Dreier this morning was talking about efforts by the GOP leadership to reach across the aisle to Democrats. He cited the vote on the class action bill and the bipartisan bankruptcy bill next week where there would be a strong vote. Do you see it that way? Do you think they are reaching across? How do you see the House running in terms of this major legislation?
Ms. Pelosi. Let me say it in four words: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
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