House Punishes Speaker For Violations It Remains To Be Seen Whether Gingrich Pays $300,000 Fine Out Of Own Pocket Or From Campaign Funds

Newt Gingrich on Tuesday became the first House speaker in history to be disciplined for ethics violations as members voted overwhelmingly to reprimand the Georgia Republican and assess a $300,000 penalty.

Most Republicans joined the 395-28 vote, disregarding a last-minute plea for a more lenient punishment from House Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas.

“The penalty is tough and unprecedented,” said Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., chairwoman of the Ethics Committee, which recommended the punishment. “It is also appropriate. No one is above the rules of the House of Representatives.”

The 90-minute debate on the House floor was subdued. Gingrich’s harsher critics remained silent, and the speeches mostly were from the circumspect members of the Ethics Committee.

Gingrich was not on the floor Tuesday and did not watch the debate on television, said his spokeswoman, Lauren Maddox. The speaker avoided cameras after a closed Republican caucus by ducking down a stairway and made no public appearances.

It is unclear whether Gingrich will use his own personal resources to pay the $300,000 fine, which a spokeswoman for Gingrich and some of his allies have suggested could be paid with campaign contributions. The speaker will make a decision on what funds to use “within a couple of weeks,” Maddox said.

Although unprecedented, the formal reprimand for “serious violations” of House rules allows Gingrich to retain his speaker post.

But this is not likely to be the end of Gingrich’s problems. The panel is making all its documents concerning possible tax law violations by Gingrich available to the Internal Revenue Service. Additional charges are still pending before the Ethics Committee. And Gingrich may walk straight into a new ethical briar patch if he decides to pay his penalty out of campaign funds rather than from personal funds.

Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., said Gingrich had tested party loyalty “to their limit” and that any further embarrassments “would be very problematic for him in our (party) conference.”

LaHood suggested the speaker would be straining his remaining good will with Republican House members if he ignited another public controversy by using campaign contributions to pay his penalty.

Gingrich earns a $171,500 salary and, in 1995, earned an additional $1.2 million in royalties from a book but, after expenses, cleared $471,000. The $300,000 fine is an assessment for the additional cost of the ethics investigation caused by false information Gingrich gave to the committee during the probe.

After two years of vigorous denials, Gingrich last month admitted to furnishing “inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable” information to the committee, but said he did so inadvertently.

The admission was part of an agreement in which Gingrich also admitted that he “failed to take adequate steps” to ensure he was obeying tax laws against using tax-exempt charitable funds for political purposes.

A report issued by the Ethics Committee last week made it clear that the committee’s outside counsel, former federal prosecutor James Cole, believed Gingrich deliberately misled the committee and also broke tax laws in financing a videotaped college course. The course was distributed around the country as part of an effort to recruit Republican political activists.

In arguing Tuesday that the Ethics Committee’s recommended punishment was “too harsh,” DeLay noted that Gingrich had not actually been charged with intentional deception nor was there any allegation the speaker gained any personal financial benefit from his actions.

“This speaker has had every detail of his life examined under a microscope and that microscope has exposed some flaws, some sloppiness or some things that should have been done better, but it has not exposed corruption,” said DeLay, the third-ranking official in the GOP leadership.

However, Ethics Committee member Ben Cardin, D-Md., said Gingrich’s ethical transgressions were “more than innocent mistakes.”

He argued that the U.S. Treasury lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” because taxpayers inappropriately deducted as charitable donations financing for a course “conceived as a political movement.”

“He did it because he couldn’t raise the money. He did it because he needed the money. That’s wrong,” Cardin said.

It remains to be seen whether Gingrich can leave the ethics matter behind and move on.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., compared the Gingrich crisis to the downfall of Democratic Speaker Jim Wright, who resigned under an ethical cloud in 1989. Frank’s theory is that Gingrich is holding onto his speakership because unlike Wright, Gingrich is feared by his troops, and because unlike Democrats in the Wright case, Republicans know they have a “weak bench.”

“Democrats said if Jim Wright is in trouble, we have Tom Foley,” Frank recalled. “Republicans say if Newt Gingrich is in trouble, we get (Majority Leader) Dick Armey.”