WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Charles Rangel faces an almost certain censure by the House, a devastating defeat for a 40-year veteran who insisted to the end that he never meant to violate House rules.
If the House votes for censure Thursday as
expected, the New York Democrat will have to humbly walk to the front of the
chamber to receive his punishment. He'll stand in front of his colleagues while
Speaker Nancy Pelosi — in one of her most solemn duties — reads him a
resolution condemning his ethical misbehavior.
The House ethics committee took a hard line toward
Rangel, 80, the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Most
past censures involved congressmen who enriched themselves. Rangel was not
charged with lining his pockets, although he did fail to pay taxes for 17 years
on income from a vacation villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.
In Rangel's case, the House ethics committee said,
his long pattern of fundraising and financial misdeeds justified the most
severe penalty short of expulsion.
Fellow Democrats on the committee showed Rangel
little more mercy than Republicans, as the committee of five members from each
party voted 9-1 on Nov. 18 to recommend censure.
Rangel has had a difficult time accepting the
punishment and planned to argue on the floor of the House for a lesser
reprimand — a vote disapproving his conduct but without the requirement that he
stand before his colleagues to accept the discipline.
His argument is that censure is reserved for
corrupt congressmen, and he's not one of them.
In a last-ditch attempt to influence the House,
Rangel e-mailed about 25,000 campaign supporters Wednesday. He asked them to
call the Capitol switchboard to get connected to their congressmen and ask them
to vote against censure.
Rangel was apologetic in his plea.
"I am truly sorry for mistakes and would like
your help in seeing that I am treated fairly," he wrote.
Rangel said he posted arguments for a reprimand on
his website, "which shows that the recommendation for censure is excessive
and that my lapses do not rise to the level of transgressions of those censured
in the past."
Rangel 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
center named after him at City College of New York.
The ethics committee found that he contacted
businesses and their charitable foundations that had issues before Congress
and, specifically, before the House Ways and Means Committee that Rangel
formerly headed. He was not, however, charged with taking any action on the
donors' behalf.
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.
Rangel has paid the Treasury $10,422 and New York
state $4,501 to fulfill another 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.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Evan Vucci)
