House Republicans, clearly frustrated by the sloth-like pace at which the Ethics Committee is looking into the tangled financial affairs of Rep. Charles Rangel, have finally decided to take the bull by the horns.
Good move.
Unless Rangel steps down this week as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee — the House’s tax-writing body — the GOP will introduce a resolution demanding his removal.
It’s not likely to succeed, of course — in fact, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer probably won’t even let it come to the floor.
But that will still force at least one roll-call vote in which Democrats will have to go on record as either backing Rangel — as Pelosi continues to do — or not.
That could prove embarrassing back home. Indeed, Republicans reportedly plan to make the embattled Manhattan Democrat their Exhibit A next year in campaign ads ridiculing Pelosi’s promise to preside over “the most ethical Congress in history.”
Congress has plainly turned a blind eye to Rangel’s shenanigans for too long. As The Post’s Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein reported yesterday, his fiscal finagling dates back 40-plus years — to even before he first ran for public office.
Back in 1965, he scored a low-interest loan from a city program to rehabilitate his family home into apartments meant for low-income tenants — but lived in one of the units himself, despite his higher income.
During his first term in Congress, he bought a four-bedroom house in DC and got tax breaks by listing it as his primary residence — though he still lived in the Harlem family home.
None of those deals are under investigation by the Ethics Committee, which for over a year has been probing Rangel’s failure to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets, his illegal use of four rent-stabilized apartments and his improper solicitation of funds for CUNY using his House letterhead.
“To allow Mr. Rangel to continue to serve as chairman is the same as allowing a confessed bank robber to serve as chairman of the Banking Committee during the trial,” says Rep. John Carter (R-Texas).
He’s right. Which is why it’s not just Republicans who have called on Rangel to step down voluntarily.
If he won’t go, and can’t be pushed, then those protecting him deserve to be publicly shamed.
A roll-call vote in Congress is a good start.