mr. speaker , the chairman of the committee on standards of official conduct is correct when he says that ethics reform must be bipartisan and if the house is to have meaningful bipartisan ethics process , changes of this magnitude can be made , as they were in 1997 , only after thoughtful , careful consideration on a bipartisan basis .  there has been no effort to look at the rules changes on ethics in a bipartisan manner .  in 1997 when i co-chaired the committee on ethics reform along with bob livingston , the changes that we made were done after deliberation , and after democrats and republicans , working together , came before the house and we did make major changes .  and we instituted the 45-day rule for assigning a proper complaint for investigation ; but we changed the rules in 1997 .  we made it clear that you can move towards an informal investigation without a finding that it merits further inquiry or a resolution of preliminary inquiry because we did not want any matter of guilt or wrongdoing for the committee to be able to get the facts necessary to decide whether to go to formal investigation .  yet this rules change which would allow after 45 days inaction to dismiss a complaint makes inaction action , and it can be done on a very partisan basis .  now , that is wrong .  that is not how it should be .  the rules as they are currently configured in order to move a complaint past the committee , you have to have the bipartisan agreement of the committee because you have to have a vote in the committee .  it guarantees a process will move forward in a bipartisan manner and , in fact , the committee on standards of official conduct has operated in a bipartisan manner because of the way the rules are configured .  if this rule is changed , you are making it much more likely that the committee on standards of official conduct will act in a very partisan matter because they will be able to delay for 45 days , which does not take a lot of effort to figure out how to delay for 45 days .  we have enough lawyers on the committee on standards of official conduct that will be able to figure out that one .  and it will be done on a partisan basis that will leave a cloud on the member and a cloud on this institution .  you should not have that in this rule .  