Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has announced that he will not step down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, despite an ethics investigation into his personal finances.
Instead, according to his lawyer, Rangel will hire a “nationally renowned forensic accounting firm” to review and report his finances. After the review, the report will be released publicly, along with 20 years of tax returns.
Rangel has admitted he did not report $75,000 in rental income for a property in the Dominican Republic but claims that he didn’t understand the tax consequences because of language and cultural barriers. “Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” Mr. Rangel said.
Really, Congressman Rangel? That’s the best you can offer? Cause $75,000 would buy you one heck of a translator… You could even tap the population of your own district – where more than half of the residents speak Spanish. Someone, somewhere could help you say:
Tengo que pagar mis impuestos.
The tax issue is particularly embarrassing for Rangel since his job as Chair of the Ways and Means Committee is to help create tax law.
Unpaid taxes may just be the tip of the iceberg: investigators are also looking into allegations that Rangel used government letterhead to promote an educational center named after him (what other kind is there?) and other questionable financial deals.
The GOP has called for Rangel’s resignation from the Committee, claiming that Rangel’s insistence on keeping his seat shows that Democrats have “officially abandoned their promise to run the most ethical Congress in history and instead embraced the politics of corruption with open arms.”
For more commentary on Rangel, check out this Oxford University Press blog.
