IN A historic and humbling rebuke to its leader, the US House of Representatives voted yesterday to reprimand Speaker Newt Gingrich and impose a $300,090 penalty on him for ethics violations.
The action made Mr Gingrich (53), a Georgia Republican, the first House speaker in US history to be punished for misconduct by a formal vote of his colleagues. The vote was 395 to 28.
"The penalty is tough and unprecedented," Representative Nancy Johnson, Republican chairwoman of the ethics committee that recommended the penalties, said in debate. "It is also appropriate. No one is above the rules of the House of Representatives."
Mr Gingrich admitted last December that he failed to get proper legal advice on the use of tax-exempt funds to finance a lecture course critics called partisan politics, and to misinforming House investigators on the facts of that case. The House ethics report concluded, and Mr Gingrich conceded, that that conduct had brought discredit upon the House.
The vote climaxed two years of bitter political strife focused on the speaker and members of the ethics committee.
Mr Gingrich was re-elected speaker just two weeks ago in a close vote in which a few of his own party members deserted him. ,He is the third-highest elected official of the United States after the President and Vice-President.
In reporting the matter to the House with its recommendations for punishment, which were those approved yesterday, the ethics committee said the offence called for a penalty "somewhere in between" a reprimand and the mores serious censure. The latter would have almost certainly required Mr Gingrich to step down.
Recent opinion polls have suggested Mr Gingrich is one of the most unpopular politicians in the United States, with only about a third of Americans approving of the job he is doing.
He appeared before House Republicans in a closed party caucus yesterday morning before the vote.
Some Republicans emerging from the meeting voiced concern, at the monetary penalty. Representative Bill McCollum of Florida, said. "This $300,000 is wrong. ,Any amount of money is, wrong.
Republican Sherwood Boehlert of New York, said the penalty set a dangerous precedent. "Any one of us could be charged with some kind of inadvertent act.. . It really sets a very dangerous precedent," he said.
The Gingrich ethics case has been the subject of fierce political jockeying. But as the vote approached both Republicans and Democrats said they wanted to get the vote on his punishment behind them and return to working on issues such as a balanced budget and social programmes.