Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Removing A Certain Member From Certain Standing Committees of the House of Representatives

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, my good friend, Chairman McGovern, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, today is a sad one for us, for me personally, for the Rules Committee, and for the entire House of Representatives. Today, we are meeting on an unprecedented resolution by the majority, removing a Member of the minority party from her committee assignments.

Now, before I continue, Madam Speaker, I want to be very clear that I find the comments made by the Representative in question before she was elected to Congress to be deeply offensive. Members of Congress are and should be held to a high standard. And if she spoke any of what has been reported while a Member of this body, her words would certainly not meet that standard.

But at last night's Republican Conference, Representative Greene expressed regret for her past statements, which speaks to a problem with today's resolution. Representative Greene is not being given the courtesy of a referral to the Ethics Committee, the body empowered to investigate the conduct of Members. She is not being given the same due process that is given to other Members before facing punishment by the House.

Why is it so hard for the majority to give a Republican Member due process before stripping her of her committees? That is all I asked the Rules Committee last night, which the majority rejected.

Today's resolution raises serious questions for this institution. Indeed, these questions have nothing to do with this particular Member at all. Instead, they are about the future of the institution. The action the majority is proposing to take today is not only premature but, in fact, unprecedented in the history of the House.

Madam Speaker, what the majority is really proposing to do today is establish a new standard for punishing Members for conduct before they ever became a Member. The majority is proposing to hold Members of Congress accountable for statements made before they were even a candidate for Congress.

This change opens up troubling questions about how we judge future Members of Congress and whether or not we, as an institution, should impose sanctions on Members for actions they took before they were even candidates for office.

Under this majority's new approach, could a Member be punished for statements they made 5 years ago? Ten years ago? Twenty years ago?

I would remind the majority that several of their own Members have engaged in activities or made comments that Republican Members find offensive and inappropriate. If the majority changes hands in the future, as it surely will at some point, how would the current majority feel if these Members are stripped of their committee assignments with no due process? My friends run the risk of setting off a tit-for-tat exchange of escalating partisan punishment and score-settling that could cripple the operation of the House now and well into the future.

But what has also never been done before in the history of the institution is this: The majority has never taken steps to exercise a veto over the minority's committee assignments. It has never been done, Madam Speaker.

I know my friend, Chairman McGovern, attempted to point out some cases in yesterday's Rules Committee hearing to the contrary. But each of those cases he cited actually involved the party sanctioning their own Members. The majority exercising a veto over the minority's assignments has never happened before.

In the past, the majority and minority have respected each other's rights to place Members on committees without interference. It has ultimately been the responsibility of each side to also hold their Members accountable for unacceptable behavior, including making decisions to remove Members from their committee assignments when warranted.

Indeed, Madam Speaker, Republicans have removed Members from committees in the past. I know. I have personally been part of those proceedings.

We can and will do so again, if necessary, but it will be done with due process and with the Members in question, whoever they may be, allowed to make their case. That is a simple standard of fair play and decency that the majority has decided not to extend to a Member of the minority in this case.

I truly believe that the majority claiming a new right to be able to exercise a veto over the minority's committee assignments will ultimately be dangerous for this institution. A change in norms away from an institution built on mutual consent and toward an institution where the majority holds a veto power over everything, including committee assignments, is ultimately an institution that cannot function.

If one side feels the other should take corrective action for one of its Members and has failed to do so, then the bipartisan Ethics Committee exists to adjudicate matters related to the Code of Official Conduct. I believe it would be appropriate for the Ethics Committee to determine if a new standard relating to the actions taken by a Member of Congress before they are elected should be covered by the Code of Official Conduct and make the appropriate recommendations for the institution to guide us going forward.

I fear that doing anything other than this would send the institution down a precarious path. The Ethics Committee is the appropriate venue for considering claims of misconduct. That is traditionally what this institution has done when considering the conduct of an individual Member. I believe today it is appropriate to adhere to that norm.

Madam Speaker, the matter we are faced with is bigger than any one individual Member. It is about how we, as an institution, will continue to function in the future. I fear that if we open this particular Pandora's box, we will not like what happens next. I would strongly urge this House to consider an alternative course before it is too late.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, just quickly, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, just to respond to my friend briefly, remember, we are doing something here that has never been done before. The majority is taking away a committee assignment of the minority. That has not happened in this House before.

Also remember, we are applying, or you were choosing to apply the code of official conduct to a Member before they were ever a Member. That has not, to my knowledge, ever been done before either.

We haven't said: Let's do nothing. We have said: These are pretty serious questions. Let's go to the Ethics Committee, adjudicate them, have a discussion, and have a recommendation come back out.

So to say we don't want to do something is just simply inaccurate. I think you are, frankly, overlooking the unprecedented nature of the acts that you have decided upon, and where that may lead us when the majority changes.

So with that, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Issa).

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, just quickly for the Record, so my friend knows, the resolution that the Republican whip, Mr. Scalise, was referring to just a few minutes ago only concerned Republicans. So if you wanted to object to Republicans, that is what you could have done. It didn't involve Democrats at all.

Madam Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to amend House rules to state that any resolution proposing to remove a Member from a committee assignment shall not be in order unless offered by, or with the concurrence of, the leader of the party of the Member that is the subject of the resolution.

Madam Speaker, this speaks to a norm of basic fairness that today's resolution does not comply with. In the past, the majority has never attempted to exercise a veto over the minority's committee assignments, nor has the minority ever attempted to do the same to the majority.

This has been, in the past, an unwritten rule, a norm the House has adhered to in order to protect the operations of the institution. But the majority's actions today threaten that norm and threaten to set off a new round of escalating partisan punishment anytime the majority changes hands. Enshrining historical practice as a new rule is an important step to protect the institution as a whole.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, just in response to my good friend: I was actually there. So, number one, she didn't get a standing ovation for things that she said. She got a standing ovation for regretting things that she had said, and saying she has been wrong, and denouncing QAnon and denouncing school shootings. That is what she got the standing ovation for. My friend didn't have the opportunity to hear that. I wanted to take the opportunity to inform him.

Madam Speaker, I would advise my friend that I am prepared to close.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I oppose the rule. Never before in the history of this institution has the majority attempted to exercise a veto over the minority's right to make committee assignments, yet, today, the majority is choosing to do just that. This leads the institution down a dangerous path, the end of which we cannot see.

Madam Speaker, there are alternative paths open that I believe the House should consider. We owe it to ourselves and to the institution to do so. Before we strip a Member of their committees for remarks that person made before they were subject to the official rules of conduct of the House, maybe we ought to have a discussion about that, if we are going to extend that in a way we never have before in the institution. I am not necessarily against that, by the way. I think that is a worthy topic.

I also think that if we are going to strip a Member before they ever served on a committee, they ought to have an opportunity to tell their side of the story in a judicious proceeding. Our Committee on Ethics has resolved a lot of naughty issues in a very bipartisan way, and not with Members escaping punishment. So to say we have asked for nothing be done, it is quite the opposite.

We have said: Let's go to the Committee on Ethics.

Let's hash through these tough issues of changing the scope of the official conduct provisions of the House that applies to Members.

Let's talk about whether or not it is appropriate for the majority to actually try to dictate the people that the minority puts on committees.

And, finally, let's give a Member that we accuse of something an opportunity to make his or her case.

That is what we have asked for, and that is what the majority has chosen not to do.

Madam Speaker, I think it is a dangerous mistake. It is a mistake that, frankly, when the majority changes, the temptation will be overwhelming for a Member to say: ``Oh, well, there is a Member I didn't like or said something or did something I didn't like. As a Member, I think I am just going to take that committee assignment away.''

I can give you a list of people that have done things that I think are inappropriate, on both sides of the aisle, quite frankly. But we have never done that here, and I don't think we should start doing that here. All we have asked for is a process, a Committee on Ethics discussion. We think that is the appropriate way to proceed.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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