New York Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel this morning announced he was temporarily stepping down from his post as Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, after an ethics committee admonished him last week for violating Congressional gift rules by accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Carribbean.
Florida House Democrats like Kathy Castor, Kendrick Meek and Alan Grayson would have had to vote today on a Republican resolution calling for him to step aside.
Rangel is hardly out of the woods, as the ethics panel is still investigating other charges against the Harlem based Representative (who has served in Congress as long as Bill Young). Those other charges include his fund-raising, as well as failing to pay federal taxes on rental income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic and his use of four rent-stabilized apartments provided by a Manhattan real estate developer.
The Rangel affair is the last thing that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs at this point. Especially after she campaigned in 2006 against the "culture of corruption" that was all about Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and Tom Foley. As Peter Beinart wrote in the Daily Beast yesterday (before Rangel announced he was stepping aside for the time being):
Democratic source says party pollsters are picking up rumblings that the Rangel scandal is starting to register with the public. If Pelosi and the White House wait until the ethics committee hands down its final verdict, it may be too late.
Is Rangel’s behavior so egregious that sheer decency requires that he be forced from his chairmanship, if not from Congress altogether? Not really. His infractions are petty compared to the vast, legalized corruption that marks our campaign finance system. But neither is Rangel worth jeopardizing the Democrats’ congressional majority for. What Mike Royko said about Dan Rostenkowski is now true for the Washington Democratic Party writ large. With unemployment at almost 10 percent, and the public eager for someone to blame, the rules have changed. To survive, Democrats must too.
It was evident that Nancy Pelosi was reluctant to move against Rangel. Somebody got to him, though. As Beinart writes, the public is always generally disgusted with Congressional ethics violations, but this year
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2010.