(Washington, D.C.) – The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) reacted negatively to a report in today’s Politico that Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) sent outrageous e-mails to House Democrats urging them not to vote with Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).  Rep Flake has attempted on eight occasions to bring a privileged resolution to the House floor demanding a House Ethics Committee investigation into the relationship between senior House appropriators and the now-defunct PMA Group.  The PMA group is at the center of an unfolding FBI investigation related to whether it traded campaign contributions for congressional earmarks for its clients.  Each time that Rep. Flake has pushed for an ethics inquiry, his resolution has been tabled before it reached the floor for a vote.  However, he has attracted an increasing number of Democratic votes with each foray; the latest, on Tuesday evening, garnered 29 democrats, the highest number so far. 

“This is an outrageous move on the part of House leadership,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz.  “The Speaker stood before the country in November, 2006 promising to lead the ‘the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.’  Instead, she has become an obstacle to good government, transparency, and accountability.  In this case, she and her congressional henchmen, Reps. Van Hollen and Clyburn, apparently are so afraid of what an ethics investigation will reveal about the corruptive nature of earmarks that they are resorting to strong-arm tactics to intimidate members of Congress, trying to deter them from exercising their oversight duties.  Thankfully, some members on the Democratic side of the aisle recognize that further partisan obstruction is damaging not only to their own images, but to the credibility of the entire institution.  These members know that they serve taxpayers first, not their leadership.”

According to Politico, the Van Hollen e-mail message that made the rounds claimed that Rep. Flake’s effort was “nothing more than a fishing expedition,” directed Democrats to once again vote to table his resolution, and “it made clear that leadership would have its eyes on any Democrats even thinking about defecting.”  Whip James Clyburn “warned Democrats that they would suffer in 2010 if Republicans succeeded in forcing an ethics investigation into the relationships Murtha and other veteran Democratic lawmakers had with the PMA Group.”  Politico reporters Patrick O'Connor and John Bresnahan also report that the Ethics Committee has been “in a state of suspended animation since its chairwoman, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, died suddenly in August.  Although Rep. Zoe Lofgren has taken Tubbs Jones’ place, it took Democrats eight months to find a new staff director.” 

“The Speaker’s campaign is part of a pattern of stonewalling and slow-walking investigations that is turning the Ethics Committee into a joke,” concluded Schatz.  “Unfortunately, while the Democratic leadership will do anything to protect the secrecy, power, and privileges associated with congressional earmarking, they seem to be blind to the damage it is doing to their own credibility and to the institution itself.”

CCAGW is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.