Congress Why Foley Stood Idle

It was a moment House Speaker Tom Foley must have dreaded since the congressional check-kiting scandal hit the headlines last year. Texas Democrat John Bryant stepped up to the lectern and said, “For Tom Foley, political leadership is not a responsibility which he relishes. I call on ((him)) to retire.”

Bryant was publicly voicing what a growing number of House Democrats have been saying behind closed doors. To them, Foley could have cleaned up the House bank before it grew into the most damaging congressional scandal in decades. Instead, he has exposed them to ridicule — and possible defeat this November — by failing to crack down on former House sergeant at arms Jack Russ, whose sloppy oversight of the now defunct bank permitted members to write overdrafts long after Russ had assured the Speaker that new procedures to prevent such abuses had been installed. Even after Foley was warned by comptroller general Charles Bowsher in 1989 that Russ himself had bounced $104,825 worth of personal checks at the bank, the Speaker made only one try to remove him.

Foley’s stab at dislodging Russ came in September 1990, nine months after Foley learned about the extent of check kiting at the House bank. Foley lacked the power to fire House officers, who are elected by the entire chamber. Rather, he tried to rewrite the rules of the House Democratic Caucus so that the Speaker, and not the caucus, would draw up the list of nominees for those jobs. Foley argued that the change would allow the Speaker more control over the administrative arms of Congress.

But the caucus rejected Foley’s proposal, and the Speaker abandoned it. Some caucus members wanted to protect Russ, a back-slapping extrovert who had built a network of bipartisan support by doling out favors to members during his 25- year career on Capitol Hill.

For the next year, Foley did nothing to determine if Russ had followed through on his pledge, made in December 1989, to tighten the bank’s check- writing policies. The scandal reached the front pages in September 1991, when the General Accounting Office reported that lawmakers had overdrawn their accounts 8,331 times between July 1989 and June 1990. Foley still did not punish Russ. As he explained in an interview last week, “I had no authority to fire Russ. I could have asked him to resign, I suppose, but I couldn’t dismiss him. And what I was seeking to do, in the early months of my speakership, was to restore a sense of calmness and comity to the House.” Russ finally resigned last month.

That noncombative stance was characteristic of Foley, a gentle man who shuns confrontation. But Foley had another reason for being wary of Russ. In 1989 Russ obtained an FBI report in which a jail inmate claimed that he had a homosexual relationship with Foley and threatened to kill him. The FBI concluded that the allegations were baseless, but the report was passed to Russ, who helped oversee security for the House.

Later that year Texas Democrat Jim Wright stepped down as Speaker after becoming embroiled in an ethics scandal. As House majority leader, Foley was the logical successor to Wright. When some Congressmen sought to reassure themselves that Foley was “squeaky clean,” they asked Russ if he had any damaging information about him. Russ told them about the FBI report.

At least two lawmakers, Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski and House Budget chairman Leon Panetta, went to Foley and asked if he was gay. Congressman Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts who is openly gay, told Russ to stop discussing the FBI report. Russ himself has denied ever spreading stories about the report. As the whispers swirled around Capitol Hill, a staff member at the Republican National Committee wrote an insinuating memorandum to state party officials that described Foley as “coming out of the liberal closet.” In private meetings with colleagues and at press conferences, Foley denied being homosexual.

The controversy died down, and Foley was elected Speaker in June 1989. Last week Foley acknowledged that he knew in 1989 of Russ’s role in spreading the FBI report, but he did not take action against Russ. As a source close to Foley explained, “If we had moved against Russ — a guy with plenty of friends among lawmakers and the press — that would have sent the FBI report soaring right back into the headlines. There was no way we wanted to start down that road again.”

In an attempt to deflect attention from the House imbroglio, Foley has called for a review of Executive Branch perks and has created a bipartisan task force to recommend an overhaul of congressional operations. He brushed off Bryant’s demand for his retirement by vowing to run for another term as Speaker. If he had shown the same zeal in dealing with Jack Russ, his re- election would not be in doubt.