House Democratic caucus headed for a racial blow-up?

3 Nov 2009 // While a lot of media attention is being devoted to the fight between the national Republican Party establishment and the insurgents who thrust Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman into the spotlight, Politico is pointing to another intra-party conflict: black Democratic lawmakers versus Members of Congress who are pushing ethics investigations.

In John Bresnahan’s telling, 7 Congressional Black Caucus members in the House of Representatives are under investigation for ethical lapses, and currently, no white lawmakers are subject to full ethics probes. Thus black lawmakers are not happy at what they see as mostly white lawmakers piling on their African-American colleagues.

The article quotes a variety of black House members anonymously expressing their concerns. And it would appear that some of them aren’t afraid to let a lie or two get in the way of telling a good story about how black lawmakers are being targeted:

Another CBC member said black lawmakers are “easy targets” for ethics watchdog groups because they have less money — both personally and in their campaign accounts — to defend themselves than do their white colleagues. Campaign funds can be used to pay members’ legal bills.

“A lot of that has to do with outside watchdog groups like [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] that have to have a level of success to justify OCE,” the CBC member said. The good-government groups were strong backers of the OCE’s creation.

But these same groups won’t go after Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), this lawmaker claimed, “because she has plenty of money to defend herself,” and the outside groups don’t want to take a risk. The Democrat said the ethics committee would be going up against Harman’s lawyers and “going up against” the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee if they push the OCE to pressure the ethics committee to act.

via Racial disparity: All active ethics probes focus on black lawmakers – Politico.com

Funny that they should call out CREW and its lack of concern for Rep. Harman. Here’s an April 2009 release in which the group calls on the Office of Congressional Ethics (which is allowed to refer cases to the Ethics Committee) to investigate Harman for her ties to AIPAC. While I find it troublesome that a black lawmaker would imply that Jewish lawmakers get superior treatment, it’s more troubling that Bresnahan would run with this quote and not point out how unambiguously false this particular objection happens to be.

Politico does usefully point out that a group of white Democratic lawmakers could find themselves subject to the same sort of scrutiny soon should the Ethics Committee decide it’s warranted. But the race of the lawmaker doesn’t really matter; if you’re a worthy elected and you’re doing things that are improper, or appear to be improper, you deserve scrutiny, and the legal bills that come with it. A lot of lawmakers have skeletons in their closets, and because of Congress’s problems dealing with them upfront and forthrightly – under Republican and Democratic majorities alike – they get left to fester.

So, for instance, when a sitting Member of Congress let’s her homes go into foreclosure and disrepair, as Rep. Laura Richardson of Long Beach, CA did, and then weird things begin happening with the house’s deed, some scrutiny appears warranted. If there’s nothing there, then so be it. But you shouldn’t just let it lie.

If anything, every time you have a Charlie Rangel or a Tom DeLay-type situation and you let it linger, it just puts more of a cloud over the public’s perception of your party’s efforts to govern. And that’s probably why there is a slight uptick in the number of Americans who are confused enough to believe that the party that gave us Mark Foley and Jack Abramoff can now be relied on more to deal with ethics and corruption in government.

Making a racial issue out of it, well, that’s just crappy politics that’s likely to help drive the Democrats back into minority party status a few cycles down the road. If Speaker Pelosi and her merry band of Ethics Committee members are wise, they will ignore these objections and give a jolt to their investigations.