DeLay Backs Off Schiavo Remarks

Majority Leader Apologizes For 'Inartful' Comments About Judges

(CBS/AP) 
DeLay said at the news conference that he was eager to appear before the leaders of the House ethics committee and give "everything I have" in connection with allegations of misconduct.

That committee, meanwhile, has deadlocked on a Democratic demand for changes in the rules that Republicans pushed through the House this winter.

The committee's leaders, Reps. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., said they had no plans to grant DeLay's request to appear before them until the committee sorts out its organizational difficulties.

Last week, President Bush put some distance between himself and DeLay after the majority leader suggested judges should be penalized for their decisions in the Schiavo case. Mr. Bush said he believed in an independent judiciary.

The president and DeLay have had a prickly relationship going back to Mr. Bush's assertion in 1999 that House Republicans were trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. When Mr. Bush pushed the House to pass a tax benefit for low-income families with children in 2003, DeLay told reporters, "Last time I checked, he didn't have a vote," referring to the president.

McClellan was questioned about his statement on Monday that the president considers DeLay a friend, in view of a scarcity of evidence of social ties between them.

"There are a number of congressional leaders that he works closely with on the Hill and he considers a friend," McClellan said. "I think there are different levels of friendship with anybody."

McClellan said the question posed to him Wednesday referred to social friends. "But no, he certainly is a friend. ... The president considers him such. And we support his efforts, along with the efforts of other congressional leaders to move forward on the agenda that the American people want us to enact."

Democrats have seized on the ethics allegations. One House Republican, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, has called for DeLay to step down. Other prominent Republicans, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have criticized DeLay's handling of the ethics controversy.

Gingrich told CBS News Correspondent Gloria Borger that Gingrich should stop blaming a left-wing conspiracy for his troubles and lay out his case for the American people to judge.

"DeLay's problem isn’t with the Democrats," Gingrich said. "DeLay's problem is with the country. And so DeLay has a challenge: to lay out a case that the country comes to believe, that the country decides is legitimate. If he does that he's fine."