Ethics You Can Believe In: Rangel Investigation Will Be Completed Just In Time For Congress To End
The House ethics panel has assured Speaker Nancy Pelosi that an investigation into the conduct of Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., will be completed by the time the current Congress goes out of business Jan. 3.
“In September, I called on the House ethics committee to look into issues raised by news reports on Chairman Rangel. . . . I have been assured the report will be completed by the end of this session of Congress, which concludes on January 3, 2009,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement released Wednesday.
The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the House ethics panel is formally known, is conducting a probe of several matters concerning Rangel, including his failure to disclose income received from property he owns in the Dominican Republic.
New allegations came to light Tuesday, when The New York Times reported that Rangel had preserved a tax benefit for an oil-drilling company on the same day that he asked the head of that company to donate money to the Charles B. Rangel public service school at the City College of New York.
Rangel refuted the Times’ reporting; the newspaper’s editorial board called on Pelosi to remove him as head of the powerful tax writing committee.
Why do these politicians even bother investigating themselves? Does anyone honestly think that an ethics committee controlled by Democrats is going to come up with anything substantive about a fellow Democrat’s corruption? And vice-versa for Republicans?
I think we need a government body independent of Congress to execute these investigations.
