This is just NUTS!!!!!....If Rangel was in business his ASS would be fired in a matter of minutes and if this was you or I we would be in jail for not paying our taxes...and now all these liberals are talking about reducing his punishment from censure.....No wonder Washington does't work...there are NO consequences for bad actions...This guy needs to be sent home....but a very least censure....Where Obama with his leadership????? what a bunch of crooks....Go Nancy...drain that swamp!
Rep. Rangel braces for punishment; censure likely
WASHINGTON – Offering an apology and a plea for leniency in the sunset of his career, Rep. Charles Rangel of New York on Thursday agreed he broke congressional rules but said the censure proposed by the House ethics committee was unfair.
Facing his colleagues, the 80-year-old Harlem Democrat spoke shortly before the House was to decide his punishment for financial and fundraising misconduct. Rangel was likely to become the 23rd House member to be censured.
The dapper Rangel, wearing a blue suit, blue tie and a blue handkerchief, faced his colleagues and told them, "I have made serious mistakes" including filing misleading financial disclosure forms and failing to pay all his taxes. But he pleaded with the House to be "guided by fairness."
Censure is the most serious House punishment short of expulsion. Rangel would have to appear at the front of the chamber while Speaker Nancy Pelosi read the resolution adopted by the House. His supporters asked instead for a reprimand, which would eliminate that humiliating appearance.
Before Rangel spoke the chairman of the House ethics committee, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, said the censure her committee recommended was consistent with a Democratic pledge to run "the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history."
She said Rangel "violated the public trust" while serving in influential positions including chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
Rangel, who brought up his combat experience in the Korean War in making his case, did not specifically propose a lesser reprimand. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said censure has been reserved for lawmakers who enriched themselves or were otherwise corrupt.
Rangel was at times contrite, saying that members of Congress "have a higher responsibility than most people" for ethical conduct and that senior lawmakers like himself "should act as a model" for newer lawmakers.
"I brought it on to myself," he said of his troubles.
Yet, the 40-year congressional veteran insists he did not intend to break any House rules, and he walked out of the ethics committee's deliberations last month because, he said, he had been treated unfairly for "good faith mistakes." The panel found him guilty on 11 of 13 charges and overwhelmingly recommended that he be censured.
It's a difficult sunset for Rangel's long career. A jovial backslapper with a distinctive gravelly voice, Rangel was re-elected in November with more than 80 percent of the vote despite being under an ethics cloud for more than two years. He has argued that censure is reserved for corrupt politicians — and he's not one of them.
He also has been making a more personal plea, asking colleagues to remember that he won a Purple Heart after he was wounded in combat in Korea, to focus on his efforts for the underprivileged and to understand that he has great respect for the institution he has served for so long. He's tied for fourth in House seniority.
The House ethics committee painted Rangel as a congressman who ignored rules of conduct and became a tax scofflaw despite his knowledge of tax law from his long service on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
Rangel chaired that panel until last March, when he stepped down after the panel — in a separate case — found that he improperly allowed corporations to finance two trips to Caribbean conferences.
Rangel shortchanged the IRS for 17 years by failing to pay taxes on income from his rental unit in a Dominican Republic resort. He filed misleading financial disclosure reports for a decade, leaving out hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets he owned.
He used congressional letterheads and staff to solicit donations for a monument to himself: a center named after him at City College of New York. The donors included businesses and their charitable foundations that had issues before Congress and, specifically, before the Ways and Means Committee.
Rangel also set up a campaign office in the Harlem building where he lives, despite a lease specifying the unit was for residential use only.
He has paid the Treasury $10,422 and New York state $4,501 to fulfill an ethics committee recommendation. The amounts were to cover taxes he would have owed on his villa income had the statute of limitations not run out on his tax bills.
The last previous House censure was in 1983, when two members, Reps. Gerry E. Studds, D-Mass., and Daniel Crane, R-Ill., were disciplined for having sex with teenage pages. Nine House members have been reprimanded, the latest last year when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. was punished for a breach of decorum.
Wilson had yelled "You lie" at President Barack Obama during a nationally televised speech to Congress.
The objective for the House is to make the punishment fit the ethics violation. In past cases, a censure usually was reserved for congressmen who enriched themselves personally.
Rangel was not charged with lining his pockets. But the ethics committee found that his violations went on for so long that the pattern of misconduct deserved a censure.
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