SPEAKER QUESTION NEEDS TO BE SETTLED

One week from today, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote to elect a new speaker for the 105th Congress. House GOP leaders have scheduled the vote for that day, as it always occurs on the first day of a new session following a general election. Also scheduled for that day is a vote on exactly what punishment shall be meted out to Speaker Newt Gingrich for his single ethics violation. Just before Christmas, House Democrats were starting to sound a new theme: That election, together with any vote on punishment, should be delayed indefinitely.

This is most regrettable. House Democrats led by their whip, Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, have over the last two years filed 74 ethics charges against Gingrich. The committee has spent two years looking into these charges, dismissing all except the one Gingrich admitted to weekend before last. Gingrich admitted to failing to seek legal advice on the use of tax-exempt organizations and for transmitting inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable information to the ethics panel.

That panel should meet over the next week and vote to submit its report to the whole House so that the entire body can vote on what course to take next Tuesday. That way, each and every member of Congress will have an opportunity to go on the record on how the speaker's situation should be handled, with the accountability that will follow. The politicization of ethics and its use as a weapon in the criminalization of politics must come to an end.