Rangel Should Step Down Pending Review

Congressional Democrats pledged to give Americans strong, ethical government. Now’s the time to make good on that promise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership should insist that U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) give up the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee that writes the nation’s tax laws, while colleagues get to the bottom of Rangel’s ethics problems.

Rangel has admitted not paying federal taxes on more than $75,000 in rental income on a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic. The New York Democrat has asked the House ethics committee to review his explanations that it was an innocent oversight on his part.

Read more: (Ken Foskett, “Rangel Should Step Down Pending Review,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/12/08)