Rangel and Waters Face Trial

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Democrat fortunes for the 2010 midterms took a turn for the worse this week as the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) voted to move forward with ethics trials against two of the party's long-standing liberal members. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) stand accused of violating a number of ethics rules.

Waters, a 10-term member, faces three charges related to intervening with the Treasury Department on behalf of a minority bank in which her husband owned over $250,000 in stock. Rangel, the former Ways and Means Committee Chairman now in his 20th term, faces 13 counts related to a variety of violations that include improper use of his office for fundraising, failing to disclose assets, delayed payment of taxes on real estate income, and improper use of a subsidized New York City apartment for campaign purposes.

Both members, who are leaders in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), publicly welcome their September trials and say they will be vindicated. Waters' defense is that she simply did nothing wrong, while Rangel admits, "I was in fact sloppy." It's not very comforting to think that a 40-year member of the House still doesn't understand the ethics rules that govern that elected body. It begs the question, did Rangel mean he was sloppy in not filing properly, or that was he sloppy in getting caught?

The whole episode flies in the face of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bold 2007 statement that her party would "drain the swamp," slamming the Republican "culture of corruption." The Demo party leadership still holds to the view that they changed the rules of the game in Congress, and the fact that these trials are taking place proves the new system they put in place actually works.

Some Democrats are not so confident. A few members have returned campaign funds they have received from Rangel, and several members have called for Rangel to step down. Barack Obama dropped a subtle hint in that direction by suggesting that Rangel be allowed to "end his career with dignity."

The CBC has played the race card, claiming that the OCE is only going after black members. This is not even remotely true, as the continuing investigations of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Pete Visclosky (D-IN) will attest, but that didn't stop House Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) from stating, "Those Tea Party people ... will not hesitate for one moment to racialize something." Of course, the only openly racial statements with regard to Waters and Rangel to this point have come from the CBC itself.

Waters was on the other side in 1995 during then-Speaker Newt Gingrich's ethics debacle, which eventually cost him his job. "The American public does not appreciate double standards. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. No one should be so big, so important, so powerful they can violate the rules of this House and the laws of this country without suffering the consequences." Perhaps Waters has mellowed her views about violating rules and laws in the last 15 years. We'll soon know whether American voters have mellowed about their own view of double standards.