Dems table GOP ethics resolution on Rangel

The House voted on Tuesday to let Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) keep his
gavel while a special investigative
panel resumes an inquiry into the Ways and Means chairman’s tax practices among other
possible ethical violations.

By a vote of 242-157, the chamber tabled a motion to remove Rangel from his chairmanship of the tax-writing panel until an ethics investigation into the congressman has been resolved; 16 members voted present.

{mosads}Five Republicans including Ron Paul (Texas), Walter Jones (N.C.), Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.) Don Young (Alaska) and Peter King (N.Y.) opposed the privileged resolution offered by the House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter (Texas.). Not one Democrat supported the Republican effort.

Republicans Roscoe Bartlett (Md.), Ted Poe (Texas), Dan Burton (Ind.) and the 13 members charged with investigating whether Rangel broke House ethics rules voted “present.”

In a press statement released Tuesday night, the chairman and vice chairman of the ethics committee explained that “it has been the practice of the Members of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to vote ‘present’ on privileged resolutions which may potentially involve the jurisdiction of the committee.”

Since news broke last year of Rangel possible ethics violations — which include failing to pay taxes on his property in the Dominican Republic, maintaining four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, using official letterhead to solicit support for the Charles B. Rangel City College of New York House — Republicans have tried and failed on previous occasions to sanction Rangel.

Jones, Paul, and Rohrabacher sided with Rangel on the last resolution in September. Young, however, voted against tabling the resolution in the fall while King did not vote on that measure.

Following Tuesday’s vote, the National Republican Congressional Committee criticized politically vulnerable Democrats who voted to table the Rangel motion.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics panel is formally known, voted to reconstitute the investigative subcommittee created last fall to look into a number of potential ethics violations involving the fourth most senior member of the House. Several former members of the full committee, Republican Doc Hastings (Wash.) and Democrats Gene Green (Texas) and Bobby Scott (Va.) were reappointed to the sub-panel.