House Tables Resolution to Censure Rangel
By Sewell Chan
Representative Charles B. Rangel (Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press)The House of Representatives decided on Thursday afternoon to table, by a vote of 254 to 138, a Republican resolution to censure Representative Charles B. Rangel, the powerful New York Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The resolution accused Mr. Rangel of “dishonoring himself and bringing discredit to the House,” citing a report in The New York Times on July 11 that Mr. Rangel occupied four rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem building, including one that he used as a campaign office.
Mr. Rangel, who was elected to the House in 1970 and is the dean of the New York Congressional delegation, has defended his housing arrangements as legal and fair and, in a forceful address to his colleagues, said he had done nothing wrong, urging lawmakers to reject the censure motion. He said he would welcome a review by the House ethics committee into his housing arrangements and into questions about his use of Congressional stationery to promote a $30 million academic center at the City College of New York, his alma mater. The Washington Post reported on July 15 that Mr. Rangel had used the letterhead to ask foundations and corporations to support the center, which will house his papers.
“I’ve never felt more secure that I’ve violated no law and no spirit of the law, but in order to make certain — to make certain — that there is no cloud over my conduct in New York, I ask the ethics committee to look into it,” Mr. Rangel said.
Mr. Rangel has said The Times’s article was unfair, a theme he emphasized in his remarks from the House floor.
“With not one scintilla of any evidence other than a newspaper story, I think fairness would say for God’s sake, don’t make a politics out of personal reputation. Strike out ‘discredit,’ strike out ‘censure’ and put in there whatever the heck the ethics committee will recommend, I join with them, I ask you to consider that, and I yield back the balance of my time,” he said at the close of his remarks. |
