Isn “cost assessment” just a pleasant euphemism for “fine”?
No. A ‘fine’ means a legal penalty for a misdeed, and for that reason, the term was specifically and intentionally not used in the Committee report. The $300,000 to be paid by Newt Gingrich is solely for the reimbursement of legal expenses and costs incurred by the Ethics Committee. As Committee Member Steven Schiff (R-NM) said at the Sanction Hearing, “the reason we used the term ‘cost assessment’ is to emphasize how we came to the conclusion to invoke it. As Mr. Cole said, we thought of a fine as a penalty to deprive somebody of a personal gain. But Mr. Gingrich never gained personally from this effort.
