The sacrifice of Charlie Rangel

When you're powerful, people give you things.

America Wants to Know once worked for a man who had more money than a human being could spend in five lifetimes, yet he made his employees go to great lengths to get free merchandise from the companies with which his company did business. What, we thought, is the point of having all the money you could ever need if you're going to spend your time thinking about how not to spend money?

But it wasn't about the money. It was about the power.

Free stuff is a sign that people fear you and seek your favor.

House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, Democrat of New York, is in a lot of trouble. He bought a vacation rental property in the Dominican Republic and the company that sold it to him didn't charge him interest on the mortgage.

He said he didn't know that, and maybe that would have been the end of the story.

But on Tuesday, Congressman Rangel's lawyer, Lanny Davis, admitted to reporters that Mr. Rangel never declared the rental income he earned from the property on his tax returns or his Congressional financial disclosure forms.

It was only $75,000 over five years, and the amount of money he owes in back taxes, when the accountants finish calculating it, will sound very trivial.

But it's not about the money.

It's about the power. It's about the abuse of power.

It's about the arrogant, clueless, self-righteous sense of entitlement that elected officials develop when they're in office too long. They begin to believe their boilerplate campaign rhetoric that they are serving the public good at great personal sacrifice.

Let's get something straight.

High public office is not a sacrifice.

It's not a sacrifice to go to work through the VIP entrance of a marble building while underlings clear the riff-raff out of your way.

It's not a sacrifice to hold the kind of position that gets your calls returned immediately, if those calls didn't get straight through in the first place.

It's not a sacrifice to be paid more than a hundred thousand dollars a year plus health insurance and a generous pension for flying back and forth to Washington to spend other people's money.

America Wants to Know is tired of hearing politicians speak of the sacrifices of public service, while they fly around the world on military jets and private corporate aircraft and then run for higher office because they also want trumpets to play when they enter the room.

Congressman Charles Rangel is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the fearsome tax-writing panel that has unrivaled power over who pays taxes and for what.

But he didn't declare all of his income and pay all the taxes that his laws required.

His laws are for other people.

If you want a reduction in your taxes, rest assured, Charlie Rangel comes to work every day vowing to make sure you don't get it. He thinks you're rich and selfish if you think your taxes are too high.

Rep. Charles Rangel should resign from the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Today.

And Democrats should push him if he won't jump.

That's because somebody's been dumping this stuff on Charlie Rangel into the press since mid-summer. Somebody's out to get him.

First it was the July 12 story in the New York Times that Rangel has four rent-controlled apartments in the Lenox Terrace complex in Harlem, courtesy of a major real estate developer. The congressman lives in three adjacent apartments and was using the fourth as a campaign office.

Then it was the story of his interest-free mortgage on the vacation property in the Dominican Republic.

And now it's the undeclared rental income.

The Republicans have a motive to destroy Charlie Rangel. If they can point to a corrupt Democratic leader every time a Republican is indicted in the Jack Abramoff investigation (more indictments were announced Monday), it will make their interviews on the cable news talk shows a lot easier this fall.

But regardless of who is digging up and dumping this dirt on Congressman Rangel, he must step down from the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. Then, as a warning to future chairmen and tax-writers, these words should be carved into the moldings along the ceiling of the hearing room:

Sauce for the goose....


Copyright 2008

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