LAST CALLS

By KAREN TUMULTY

It was supposed to have been Newt Gingrich's valedictory, the week in which the first Republican House in 40 years could count its accomplishments before returning home to face the voters. As he sat last Thursday afternoon on the sun-washed balcony of his Capitol suite, the Speaker ticked them off: the line-item veto, a sweeping telecommunications law, a crackdown on illegal immigration, an expansion of health insurance, welfare reform, even a savings of $500,000 by ending daily ice deliveries to congressional offices. Then, in Gingrich fashion, he reached back--quite a reach--for a historical analogy. "You could make a pretty good case," he said, "that this is the most significant Congress since the Great Society."

At that moment two floors below, a bipartisan group of Congressmen--two Democrats, two Republicans--was deciding there might be a pretty good case to be made against Gingrich. After weeks of partisan squabbling in Congress, the investigative subcommittee of the House ethics committee voted unanimously to expand its two-year probe of the Speaker. Soon after, the full 10-member committee seconded the decision. Of the four new charges they decided to pursue, the most serious one asks whether the Speaker gave investigators "accurate, reliable and complete information"--meaning, did he lie to them?--about the tangled links between his videotaped college course, the tax-exempt foundation that developed it, and GOPAC, his political operation. The questions boil down to whether he used tax-exempt donations to support a political undertaking. Although Gingrich insists the charges are groundless, the action guaranteed that the case will dog him beyond the election, whether or not he returns as Speaker.

--By Karen Tumulty