Wilson County Tea Party Reports – YOU DECIDE!

In 2008, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised the ‘most ethical Congress in history’.

Yeah, right.

You may have heard blips in the news recently about Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY).  Mr. Rangel has been a Representative from the 15th District of New York for almost 40 years and, more importantly, he is the chairman of the very powerful House Ways and Means Committee.  The House Ways and Means Committee is responsible for writing America’s tax laws.  However, in additional to a few other ethical lapses, it seems that Rep. Rangel has experienced a little problem paying his own taxes.  Take a look at some of Charlie’s “lapses” (multiple sources):

Late last week, the House Ethics Committee “admonished” Rangel for taking two trips to the Caribbean that were paid for by corporate sponsors. The ethics panel approved the trips but still disciplined Rangel, saying his staff tried to brief him on who was footing the bill. The Ethics Committee is still reviewing a host of other allegations against Rangel, ranging from his failure to pay taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic to his use of Congressional stationary to raise donations for his school of public service at City College of New York.

How about this one?

…. we learned that Rangel filed a grossly misleading financial disclosure report for 2007 — failing to report at least half a million dollars in assets.

It turns out Rangel had a credit union account worth at least $250,000 and maybe as much as $500,000 — and didn’t report it. He had investment accounts worth about the same, which he also didn’t report. Ditto for three pieces of property in New Jersey.

Beyond that, we’ve learned that Rangel has failed to report assets totaling more than $1 million on legally required financial disclosure forms going back to at least 2001.

Good ole’ Charlie has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for quite some time despite promises by Speaker Pelosi that their investigation would be complete by January 2009…..yes, 2009! The Ethics Committee, however, seems to be having trouble determining if Rep. Rangel’s multitude of ‘mishaps’ are considered ‘unethical’…..by Congressional standards.

That explains it. ……. Congressional standards ….

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s responded to last week’s minor admonishment by saying that the admonishment “is not good, but his actions did not put the nation at risk in any material way”.

Of course not, Nancy……

NOTE:  In October 2009, both TN Reps Jim Cooper and Bart Gordon voted against a motion to remove Rep. Charlie Rangel as Ways/Means Chairman due to failure to pay almost $1 million in income taxes (H Res. 805).

UPDATE 3/3  8:00AM:  Charlie Rangel is temporarily stepping down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.