Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) took a leave of absence - but pointedly didn’t resign -from the chairmanship of the House Ways & Means Committee today amid ethics violations rulings and continuing investigations into his finances. After late-night meetings with longtime ally House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rangel said this morning he was stepping aside temporarily until the remainder of the investigations was completed.
Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.) was set to introduce a privileged resolution today to force a vote by the full House on Rangel’s removal from the post should he tarry with his resignation.
“I have this morning sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi asking for a leave of absence until such time as the Ethics Committee has completed its work,” Rangel said.
He then refused to take questions.
Carter spokesman John Stone told HUMAN EVENTS last night, “We have heard conflicting reports from members of the media saying he’s told them he’s stepped down and others saying he’s told them he hasn’t. So we’re planning to proceed with the resolution, until we get some sort of clarification of his status.”
Rangel’s fortunes began to unravel when the bi-partisan House Ethics Committee ruled last week that he violated ethics rules in accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean.
“The fact that the first count has been returned with the equivalent of a guilty verdict, while a score more are still pending after a year-and-a-half, is very serious,” Carter told HUMAN EVENTS. “But the fact that Chairman Rangel refuses to make public his tax returns for the years in question is a smoking gun that indicates more serious wrongdoing.”
“However, the real issue is fundamental fairness,” Carter continued. “Will America allow the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that oversees taxation to evade income tax without penalty, while an average taxpayer would face massive penalties and interest for the same offense? It is ironic that the Chairman is supporting new federal prison sentences for working Americans for not making their health insurance premiums, while himself walking free from a decade of evading income taxes on his Caribbean resort rental property.”
Carter, a former judge, became secretary of the House Republican Caucus last year, transforming the office into an ethics watchdog post. He’s been a relentless in his pursuit of equal application of the law, introducing legislation entitled the Rangel Rule last year that would allow everyday Americans to get the same treatment by the IRS that Rangel received when he avoided paying interest and penalty payments for delinquent taxes.
Carter also won his House primary election challenge last night so, all in all, it was a big day for the former judge.
HUMAN EVENTS reported yesterday on behind the scenes jockeying and ruffled feathers in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) over Rangel’s impending removal from the chair. As the first CBC member ever to hold the chair of the powerful tax-writing committee, the CBC wants another member from their caucus to replace him. Pelosi would have to reach down to number five in committee seniority to accomplish that feat.
A report in Politico now says one of five committee members would get the post if vacated.
“Political oddsmakers from the Capitol to K Street say that it could be any of the top five Democrats on the committee behind Rangel: Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) or Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.).”
Republicans File Resolution to Block EPA Endangerment Finding
Republican leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, along with 84 additional Republicans introduced H.J. Res. 77 yesterday, a resolution of disapproval on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plan to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. EPA actions would back-door through regulation the implementation of the cap-and-trade national energy tax legislation that passed the House last year then died in the Senate due to overwhelming public opposition.
“The last thing we need in a struggling economy is what amounts to a new tax on energy,” Boehner said at the presser. “This tax is going to hit every family and small business owner whether they drive a car, flip on a light switch or buy any American-made product.”
The EPA’s endangerment finding undergirds an aggressive effort by the administration to bypass Congress to implement a national energy tax. The finding was based on the fatally-flawed pseudo-science at the heart of the Climategate scandals where whistleblowers have exposed agenda-driven data and information manipulation in emails between scientists.
“The endangerment finding that EPA put out last year is fatally flawed,” Barton said. “We want to send a very clear signal that what the EPA has done is wrong and it should be overturned by the elected members of the House and the Senate.”
Rep. Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, opposes this regulatory overreach to impose a national energy tax.
“Regulations promulgated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, the so-called endangerment finding, constitutes just that [a national energy tax],” Pence said. “The House Republicans have introduced a joint resolution of disapproval that, if adopted by the Congress, would prevent the EPA from promulgating this cascade of anti-growth rules and requirements on the American economy.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Cal.) talked about the need to re-assess the data sets brought into serious question by Climategate. Some of the foundational data sets like the backup for warmer Michael Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” global warming trend claims have mysteriously disappeared. I asked Issa about these data sets.
“It’s very clear that we need to measure accurately if we’re going to invest trillions of dollars,” Issa said. “We believe the EPA has a responsibility, the administration has a responsibility, when fundamental data used to make these decisions is not just called into question but proved to have been erroneous, to get good data. And if you can’t get good data, would anyone… support investing trillions of dollars in economies around the world, particularly with some economies exempted, if in fact we’re doing it without the science to support whether we’re really doing any good or simply giving up viable alternatives for jobs and economic growth for our own people.”
I asked Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), member of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce at the presser about the missing data at the base of anthropogenic global warming claims.
“I think Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations should have a hearing and say, ‘Look, part of this was paid with taxpayer funds. Let’s figure out what happened to this data.’”
The British House of Commons held their own oversight hearing yesterday into the Climategate hoax, grilling the head British scientist at the center of the scandal, Phil Jones.
The British Institute of Physics released yesterday the strongest rebuke to date over Jones’ actions.
“Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method,” the Institute stated in hearing testimony.
Jones admitted the authenticity of the emails.
