The wording of the bill in question:

Directing the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to respond to the indictment of, or the filing of charges of criminal conduct in a court of the United States or any State against, any Member of the House of Representatives by empaneling an investigative subcommittee to review the allegations not later than 30 days after the date the Member is indicted or the charges are filed.

Ms. Boyda rose in support, and plugged her own bill (which I support, being a person whom, if convicted of a serious crime will lose his federal pension, and too bad about my family members - an issue raised in objection to Nancy's bill I gather). Her bill and it's Senate counterpart have passed, the versions need to be reconciled and then sent forward to the President.

Since this is all politics and somewhat wordy, I've stuck the quotes from the Congressional Record of Ms. Boyda and Mr.Dreier, and my own naive musings in the Flash Traffic/Extended Entry.

Now the time has come for another step, and our actions in the next days will determine the strength of our resolve. Did we mean it last November when we said we would change Congress, or were our words just mere election-year slogans?

If we meant what we said, then it is clear what must happen next. First, the House Ethics Committee must launch investigations into public reports of congressional corruption, including accusations that Mr. William Jefferson committed crimes such as racketeering, soliciting bribes and money laundering. This committee must investigate. No excuses and no delays. And if the Ethics Committee proves unable to complete this, its most basic responsibility, then Congress must create a more independent Ethics Committee, capable of the initiative and oversight that the American people deserve. [emphasis mine]

But that isn't enough. Although Mr. Jefferson should and must enjoy the presumption of innocence granted to all American defendants, as a Member of Congress he has a special pact with the American people. If Mr. Jefferson left Congress today, if he were to resign today, as I know many of us wish that he would, then tomorrow he will begin drawing a Federal pension for his service in Congress. According to the National Taxpayers Union, that pension will exceed $40,000 a year.

This, and I mean this word literally, is an outrage. Taxpayers should not fund the pensions of Members of Congress who had to resign or have resigned in disgrace, and Congress has the responsibility to end this state of affairs.

We must strip the pensions of any Member of Congress who commits a major Federal crime while in office. I offered a bill, the Pensions Forfeiture Act, to do precisely that, and it passed the House of Representatives earlier this year. A similar bill has passed the Senate, and now it must be sent to the floor as a reconciled bill that we can finally send to the President.

Let's not permit committee delays or needless procedure to interfere one more day with real, meaningful ethics reform. Let's pass the Pensions Forfeiture Act into law, and, what's more, let's end the revolving door. Let's establish an independent ethics commission, and let's begin to rebuild the trust of the American people.

Heh. Good luck on that Ms. Boyda. Getting your colleagues to subject themselves to an "Independent" ethics commission. Truth be told, however - I just wish the American people could do a better job of picking candidates for positions like yours (and this is a general, not specific to Boyda comment) and provide us a body of responsible people who could behave responsibly. But you're probably right, that just isn't in the cards. Just as the Generals don't do that good a job of cleaning out their own trash until the stench is simply unendurable, I guess we can't expect any more from Congress.

Representative Dreier, (R-CA) made his own point regarding how the Majority has been handling things.

But I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, what troubles me about where we are at this moment. I just today looked at a report that was issued on the great new openness and the way this institution has been run and how dramatically improved it is. And then we are given, with this resolution, with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, a very, very poorly drafted resolution. That is the reason that we have a referral process.

In the 109th Congress, we had many, many issues that we had to address. And original jurisdiction matters that were referred to the Committee on Rules in fact were addressed in hearings, were addressed in markups, and in fact were resolved.

We listened to colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, talk about all of these great reforms that were implemented on the opening day of the 110th Congress and these great changes that have taken place. Well, Mr. Speaker, I have to tell you that we also have been spending time in the 110th Congress cleaning up the poorly worded, messy language that we dealt with.

One example: In a rule that was passed by this House we self-executed a provision which actually allowed Members to once again attend charitable events. In the opening day rules package that was put into place on this issue, Mr. Speaker, there was a provision that actually denied Members, it denied Members, the opportunity to attend charitable events.

Now, that was rectified. But I use that one example, Mr. Speaker, to point to the fact that if we had handled this issue the way Mr. Conyers had handled the issue of lobbying ethics reform, which we supported in a bipartisan way, we would not be dealing with a resolution that creates the potential, Mr. Speaker, for Members of this House who face a traffic ticket, Members who might want to protest, as I said earlier in my remarks, at the Sudanese Embassy over policies that are taking place there.

What it would mean, Mr. Speaker, is under this resolution, a Member who gets a traffic ticket, gets a ticket for littering, is arrested for protesting at the Sudanese Embassy, that that would have to be referred to the Committee on Standards.

My friend has just said there is a provision in here, it is the last line, item 2 in the "resolved" clause, which says if the committee does not empanel an investigative subcommittee to review the allegations, submit a report to the House describing its reasons for not empaneling such an investigative subcommittee, together with the actions, if any, the committee has taken in response to the allegation.

So, Mr. Speaker, this very, very poorly crafted resolution basically does state that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct does in fact have to deal with this, even if they choose, because it was a protest or a traffic ticket or a littering ticket, they still have to deal with this issue by choosing not to empanel an investigative committee to address that.

How sad. And it's a bi-partisan issue, to be sure. The disease of power is an equal opportunity slayer of character. One almost wonders if we wouldn't do as well, or better, if we *drafted* a Congress...

The debate, extracted from the Congressional Record, is available here, at GovTrack, a very useful Internet tool - you can customize alerts and get emailed links to items/persons of interest in the goings-on of the Congress.