Most ethical congress ever
WASHINGTON - After being admonished by an ethics panel for accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean, Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., will take a "leave of absence" from his chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means committee, NBC News has learned.
Rangel said early Wednesday that he would hold a 9 a.m. ET press conference to answer questions about his status.
The committee's top spot may temporarily go to Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., according to leadership sources, or to Rep. Pete Stark of California, the committee's second-ranking Democrat.
Asked by an NBC reporter Tuesday if he will remain chairman, Rangel responded with an emphatic "yes."
"You bet your life on it," he said.
But t wo Democratic sources told NBC News that Rangel will take a "leave of absence" — beginning Wednesday — until the investigation is over.
The powerful Democrat was encouraged to step aside before the House votes on a bill to strip him of his chairmanship.
"We don't have the votes to save him," one Democratic member said of Rangel.
In a report released Friday, the House ethics committee said that aides to the 20-term New York Democrat tried at least three times to show him the trips — to Antigua in 2007 and St. Maarten in 2008 — had corporate sponsorship, a violation of congressional gift rules.
Several of Rangel's fellow Democrats had called for him to give up his committee gavel in recent days. On Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, a member of the Ways and Means Committee and the Congressional Black Caucus, said that Rangel should "should do the right thing and step aside."
Rangel said last week that the report by the ethics panel "exonerate[d]" him because it cites no evidence that he knew the trips were sponsored by corporations.
In a written statement, the congressman responded to the ethics panel, calling its decision "ill-considered, unprecedented, unfair ... and wrong on the facts and the law."
Rangel denied to investigators that he saw any of the written communications from staff members.
Rangel, 79, was first elected to the House in 1970 from New York's Harlem district, defeating Adam Clayton Powell Jr., at the time the most prominent black politician in the country and one with his own ethics problems.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35678683/ns/politics-capitol_hill/
