Word: foley
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hoping it would all go away, House Speaker Tom Foley at first declared that check-bouncing privileges would be canceled and members would be required to pay the same penalties as everyone else for overdrawing their accounts. But rather than blowing out to sea, the storm only gathered strength. Last week Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas and Democrat Mary Rose Oakar of Ohio revealed that roughly 300 legislators owed the main House restaurant and catering service more than $300,000, thereby confirming the charge that in Congress there is indeed a free lunch...
...shut down their private bank, which by this time had been dubbed B.C.C.I., the Bank of Corrupt Congressional Incumbents. Dozens of lawmakers came forward and admitted writing bad checks, offering up the occasional absentminded staffer as a sacrificial lamb. Refusing to release names of all the deadbeats, Foley referred the issue to the House ethics committee. But that move also invited derision at the idea of the ethically blind leading the ethically blind. It turns out at least some committee members, including the chairman, have been named in the scandal...
...furor began when the General Accounting Office revealed that in one year alone, members of Congress bounced 8,331 checks -- 581 for $1,000 or more -- giving themselves, in effect, interest-free loans. Millionaire lawmakers, said investigators, were among the worst offenders, but the habit was shared by Foley, majority leader Richard Gephardt and minority whip Newt Gingrich, which may help explain the lack of enthusiasm for an investigation among any but the most novice Congressmen. "I wrote one check for insufficient funds," said Gingrich, "and deposited funds to cover it within 48 hours." Period...
...Brady bill, which does not require identity checks and will not remove guns that are already in the hands of criminals, is a very limited piece of legislation. Said House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, a Washington State Democrat who did not vote on the gun-control issue last week: "I think all handgun- violence controls overpromise their results, without exception." But Brady's approval by the House represents a significant symbolic victory for the gun-control forces and shows that legislators are responding to the public's concerns about crime. Says Houston homicide division Captain Bill Edison...
...that invitations to last week's $500-a-head "Gus Savage for Congress" fund raiser in Washington went to some of the same organizations he had vowed to "run back to Highland Park where you came from." What's more, the invitations carried the name of House Speaker Tom Foley, who had professed to be "disturbed" by Savage's inflammatory campaign rhetoric. The Speaker didn't turn up at the bash, but a Foley spokesman confirms that he "supports all Democratic candidates...