mr. speaker , i appreciate the gentleman yielding . 
this is a very , very important issue that upholds the integrity of the house , that has to do with the image of the house in making sure that the house can enforce its own rules in a bipartisan way . 
i would just remind the gentleman , with all the work that the gentleman from maryland ( mr. cardin ) xz4000640 and mr. livingston did , which is excellent work , unfortunately , we can not anticipate unintended consequences ; and once we start implementing that wonderful work , we find out that there are some flaws that need to be corrected . 
the speaker of the house looked at the last few years and decided that the rules allowed the use of the committee on standards of official conduct for partisan purposes , and its ability to act in a bipartisan way was seriously hindered . 
most importantly , there were some due-process issues to protect members of their due-process rights . 
i will give my colleagues one example . 
the committee , on its own , decided to change the way they operated from the past . 
in the past , when the committee wanted to warn a member about certain actions that were not in violation of the rules , they used to send a private letter to that member . 
this committee and the last committee had decided on their own that , without consulting with the affected member , to send a public letter and release the underlying documents to support their position , without the opportunity for a member to face the committee and discuss those letters of warning , the speaker felt very strongly that that undermines the rights of every member , both democrat and republican , to due process . 
the speaker , in his office , looked at the standing rules of the 108th congress in this regard and felt that some minor changes needed to be made ; one , to protect the committee from being politicized ; and , two , to protect members ' rights of due process . 
that suggestion by the speaker , as the gentleman knows , was brought to this house and debated extensively on this house floor , and those amendments to the rules were passed by the entire house , with some nay votes , i understand . 
i think it is unfortunate that we have found ourselves in this position , particularly when the speaker was trying to protect the rights of the members and certainly , more importantly , protect the integrity of the institution that we have reached this point . 
i am advised through the speaker that the chairman of the committee on standards of official conduct is working with his ranking member , and i would hope that they would come to some sort of agreement in how we get past this impasse . 
otherwise , the rights of members will not be protected , and i find that extremely unfortunate . 
