Word: russe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
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...
...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...
...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...
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...