Subject: Congratulations, We Did It!

From: "Chellie Pingree, CEO Common Cause" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:56:55 -0700

Dear Common Cause Activist,

We did it!  The House late Wednesday voted 406-20 to reverse all the ethics rules the GOP leadership forced on the chamber back in January.  Congratulations goes to every single one of our members and supporters who joined us during the last few months in our fight to reverse the rule changes and restore accountability in one of our most democratic institutions.  This was a textbook example of how a  grassroots citizens lobby is supposed to work.  It is remarkable how a concerted campaign fueled by the passion and energy of thousands of Common Cause activists pushed back the leaders of a powerful political party and and forced them to change course on ethics rules.  This is something the majority party always hates to do.

During the last few months Common Cause supporters:

 - Flooded Capitol Hill with thousands of phone calls and emails, lobbying members of the Ethics Committee and the GOP leadership for a full-scale investigation into the ongoing ethics scandals.

 - Helped us gather more than 60,000 signature petitions asking Tom DeLay to step down as majority leader.

 - Organized house parties and in-district meetings all over the country, engaging their families and communities about the House ethics crisis.

 - Helped us reach out with our message of accountability to reporters and editorial board writers all over the country, resulting in an astounding number of editorials calling for reform of the ethics process.

Although this was a big win for us, we still have serious concerns about how the Republican leadership purged the ethics committee and stacked it with members like Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who is closely linked to Tom DeLay and last year donated $10,000 to his legal defense fund.  And Smith isn't the only member of the ethics panel who opened his wallet for DeLay, yet will have to sit in judgement of him.  Rep. Tom Cole also donated $5,000 to help defray DeLay's mounting legal bill for his ethics problems.

What's more, four of the five Republicans on the ethics panel have received contributions from DeLay's federal action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC).

We cannot allow this blatant conflict of interest to go unchecked and we plan to fight the makeup of the committee.  Despite the roll back of the January rules changes, the panel is actually in worse shape than before because it has so many DeLay loyalists.

The next step is the creation of a bipartisan task force that includes outside experts to review the ethics process.  We will also renew our call for the appointment of an outside council to investigate DeLay, as we have done historically when a member of leadership is mired in ethics problems.

We will continue to ask for your support so that we can keep the heat on Tom DeLay, who we believe is ethically unfit to lead this House:

http://www.commoncause.org/KeeptheHeatonDeLay

We hope you will stay with us so that we can keep the pressure on this Congress to keep its leadership in check, and encourage others to join in our fight (http://www.commoncause.org/TellFriends).  But today congratulations are in order to everyone associated with Common Cause.

Thank you again for all you do for Common Cause.

Sincerely,

Chellie Pingree
President & CEO, Common Cause

Forward this email: http://www.commoncause.org/TellFriends

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