WASHINGTON — Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel yesterday beat back an attempt by Republicans to force him to step down as Ways and Means Committee chairman.
The Democrat-controlled House voted 246-153, mostly along partisan lines, to banish the anti-Rangel resolution to the Ethics Committee, which has been investigating the Harlem lawmaker for more than a year.
By sending the legislation to the panel rather than simply voting to kill it on the House floor, Democrats provided themselves some political cover from accusations that they helped protect the accused tax cheat.
Two southern Democrats — Mississippi Reps. Gene Taylor and Travis Childers — supported the Republican effort.
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who authored the ouster resolution, said voters should look carefully at how their representatives voted on the measure.
“Today, the majority party in the House of Representatives approved a double standard for taxpayers — one for powerful Washington politicians and another for regular working Americans,” Carter said.
Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, who represents parts of The Bronx and Westchester, defended Rangel afterward, saying the GOP effort was politically motivated.
“These things are partisan attacks,” he said.
Rangel emerged from the vote looking battle-weary and uncharacteristically hesitant to speak to reporters.
“I’ve been waiting patiently for the Ethics Committee to make a judgment. That’s where it belongs, it doesn’t belong on the floor,” Rangel said.
He admitted that the longstanding cloud of suspicion over him is taking a toll.
“Naturally, it’s a thing that bothers me and my family, the way that — well, that’s enough comment,” Rangel said as he slipped into a meeting with the tax-writing committee.
Six Republicans voted with Democrats on the measure, including Rep. Peter King of Long Island.
King, who balked at similar GOP efforts over the past year, said he expects to wait until the Ethics Committee finishes its work.
“I think it’s a bad precedent to consider someone guilty before the investigation is done,” King said.
The Ethics Committee’s investigation has been expanded twice.
Among other items, the panel is examining Rangel’s failure to declare rental income on a beachfront villa he owns in the Dominican Republic, his possession of four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem and his use of congressional stationery to solicit donations for an academic center named for him at City College.