Charlie Rangel: Poster Boy for Government Corruption?

I think that Congressman Charlie Rangel has crawled into a hole he will never be able to extricate himself from.

Rangel under-reported his income by as much as 1.7 million dollars, and then blamed his accountants for the error. Now there's a surprise, who would have guessed that Rangel would blame someone besides himself.

What makes this revelation so damning is that Rangel is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for writing the very tax law that Rangel seems to disregard.

This isn't Rangel's first attempt at evading paying his fair share of taxes. He was caught not reporting income of $75,000 from a rental villa he owns in the Dominican Republic. Rangel was forced to pay the taxes, but only after he denied that the error was his fault. A few weeks later it was discovered that he had under-valued one of his properties by as much as $500,000 dollars.

According to CBS News one year ago, “Rangel, the head of the committee that not only writes the tax code but also oversees the budget, now admits his own tax records are in such disarray, he's had to bring in a forensic accountant to find out just what he owes on items like unreported income on the building he and his wife once owned. Then there is the possible ethical lapses in perhaps getting a favor to combine three condos into one, below-market apartment. Or explaining just how another Dominican condo was financed.”

So, Rangel's major tax problems are not new, nor are they unusual.

Yesterday, the Washington Post, a liberal newspaper if there ever was one, suggested for the second time that Rangel resign his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee.

“We called on Mr. Rangel to resign his coveted post last November while the House ethics committee probed his contact with a potential donor to a pet project who also had business before the committee. Mind you, that committee already was looking into his using official stationery to raise funds for that pet project, paying below-market rents on four Harlem apartments, failing to report income from a Florida condominium sale and failing to pay taxes on a home in the Dominican Republic. There's another subcommittee investigation into lobbyist-paid trips by Mr. Rangel and four other members of Congress.”

Another shocking disclosure was released after the Post hit the streets.

After the House Ethics Committee began its investigation of Rangel, he (Rangel) has made large cash contributions to campaign funds of three of the Democratic Congressmen doing the investigation. One of the Democrats returned the $20,000 to Rangel, but there's no report that the other two who received contributions have done likewise.

Has Rangel graduated from tax evasion to thinly masked bribery? It seems that way on the surface, which falls under the adage, “where's there's smoke, there is invariably fire.”

If Rangel does not resign his chairmanship very soon, Pelosi should remove him. Rangel is a prime example of what is wrong with politics these days, particularly within the Democratic Party controlled Congress. However, with Pelosi's credibility being as low as it is, she may not feel that there is anything to lose by not yanking Rangel off of the committee.

Nonetheless, Rangel hurts the Democrats every day he remains in power, even in office. He undermines the Democratic Party's ability to be taken at its word.

Let's be frank, censure and maybe even impeachment hearings should be immediately considered for Rangel. He needs to disappear and do so quickly.