Posts Tagged ‘Charlie Rangel’
November 19th, 2010 by John Feehery
Charlie Rangel admitted yesterday that he isn’t very good with numbers. He took the blame for not paying his taxes, but being bad at numbers isn’t anything new for the Democratic Party.
The Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner, isn’t very good with numbers either. We all know that he forgot to pay his taxes too. It is hard to make the case to the public that they should pay their taxes when the guy who is in charge of the IRS and the guy who is in charge of overseeing the IRS don’t know enough about numbers to be able to pay their own personal taxes.
Governing is all about numbers.
Numbers are important for governing because the first thing you have to do when you govern is figure out the budget. Budgeting is about making choices. And we can’t afford to do everything we want to do.
The American people are starting to figure that out these days, which is why they want a balanced budget. They want the politicians to make the hard choices. But politicians don’t want to make hard choices, because they can read the polls. And the reason choices are hard is because the polls say you shouldn’t make them. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Charlie Rangel, Congress, Democrats, Geithner, Government, Obama, Politics, Presidential election, Republicans
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2010 by John Feehery
Charlie Rangel
Four years ago, Charlie Rangel endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, and he stuck with that endorsement until the last possible moment, until it became clear to just about everybody that Barack Obama, and not Hillary Clinton, was going to be the Democratic nominee for President.
Rangel endorsed Clinton for a variety of reasons. Clinton was his home state Senator. Rangel didn’t think Obama was going to win. Rangel was a good friend of Clinton, urging her to run for Senator in the first place.
You could also surmise that the old bull Rangel didn’t think Obama was experienced enough to be President. You could also surmise that Rangel, as the House Ways and Means Chairman, was the most powerful black leader in the country, and frankly, he didn’t want his power challenged by a young upstart.
Like many other African-American leaders from the older generation, Rangel has had a frosty relationship with Mr. Obama. Jesse Jackson has been caught on tape several times saying derogatory things about the President. Bobby Rush, who was challenged in a Congressional primary by Obama, was the first to challenge his blackness. Read more...
Tags: African-Americans, Barack Obama, Charlie Rangel, Hillary Clinton
Posted in Politics, Theory, election | No Comments »
May 18th, 2010 by John Feehery
Enron Complex / Photo credit: Alex (http://budurl.com/nwem)
Originally posted at http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/98251-no-cash-no-campaigns
It has become an almost weekly ritual, especially in the Age of Obama.
A major corporation, let’s say Goldman Sachs or British Petroleum, or in days past, Enron or Halliburton, gets into some hot water politically.
The inevitable committee hearings are called, and the major executives of said corporations are brought before the assorted members of Congress and publicly flogged to the satisfaction of the representatives’ staffs and family members and to the titillation of national media.
And as the flogging commences, inevitably, the congressional committees of one side or the other publicly demand representatives return the campaign contributions from the corporations that were publicly flogged.
This same thing happens when a member of Congress gets into legal trouble. It happened to Tom DeLay, to Mark Foley, and to Charlie Rangel and John Murtha. The money they gave to their colleagues is suddenly tainted and must be returned — or else.
The irony is that the campaign committees, usually the ones who are calling for the campaign money to be returned, wouldn’t survive without these campaign contributions. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, campaign, campaign contributions, Charlie Rangel, Congress, election, Enron, Goldman-Sachs, Government, Halliburton, John Murtha, Mark Foley, PAC, senators, Tom DeLay
Posted in Fundraising, Government, Politics, Theory, election | No Comments »
March 6th, 2010 by John Feehery
The resignation of Congressman Eric Massa complicates the life of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And her life is already pretty complicated.
Of course, it means one less vote for a health care bill that Congressional Democrats are trying to get through a reluctant House.
And one vote is a big deal, because it looks like pro-life Democrats aren’t going to swallow what the Senate passed late last year.
The Democrats have constructed a complicated scheme to pass health care, overly complicated in my view. The House has to somehow pass a Senate bill that includes a huge new tax increase on labor union health plans and abortion language that is still unacceptable to Bart Stupak.
Then they are going to pass another follow-on bill that will somehow reverse that labor union tax with so-called “reconciliation” instructions that the Senate then will theoretically take up and pass with 51 votes.
But first, the Senate has to hope that the Senate parliamentarian decides that whatever the House passes somehow fits in with the Senate rules, not a certain proposition.
And if the Parliamentarian decides that it is not kosher, well, then, Joe Biden has to step in and create a new precedent that will give the Republicans ample cause to shut the Upper Chamber down for a while. Read more...
Tags: abortion, Bart Stupak, Bill Clinton, Charlie Rangel, Congress, Democrats, Denny Hastert, Eric Massa, health care, House, Joe Biden, Mark Foley, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Senate, Tom DeLay, Ways and Means Committee
Posted in Government, Politics, Scandals, election | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010 by John Feehery
Charlie Rangel is not crazy. He may be liberal. He may be corrupt. He may be a partisan. But he is not crazy.
The same cannot be said of Pete Stark, the man who will take Charlie Rangel’s place.
This reminds me a little bit of when Tom Foley had to find a replacement for Dan Rostenkowski during critical moment in the Clinton health care push, and put Sam Gibbons in the Chairman’s Chair. Gibbons was not nearly as crazy at Pete Stark, but he wasn’t nearly as competent as Rosty, and Hillary’s health care died as a result.
Pete Stark is certifiable. He has a penchant for disparaging just about everybody.
He once told a constituent: “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg, it wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.” He Called Blue Dog Democrats, the folks he needs to pass his health care bill, “brain dead.” He said the Bush Administration sent soldiers “to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement.” According to Gannet, during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, he called fellow liberals Tom Lantos and Stephen Solarz ‘hostile militant guys,’ suggesting their votes were ‘as a matter of convenience’ for Israel.” He claimed that the children of one of his African American colleagues were “all born out of wedlock.” Read more...
Tags: Bill Clinton, Charlie Rangel, Crazy, Dan Rostenkowski, Nancy Pelosi, Pete Stark, Sam Gibbons, Tom Foley, Ways and Means Committee
Posted in Government, Politics | No Comments »
March 3rd, 2010 by John Feehery
“The times, they are a changing.”
That anthem of the 60’s should always be in the minds of all Hill ethics counselors.
Charlie Rangel’s troubles with the Ethics Committee follow a familiar path.
I remember well in November of 1994, when an obscure challenger named Michael Patrick Flanagan knocked off a powerful Ways and Means Chairman who had delivered billions of dollars back to his hometown of Chicago.
Before 1992, Dan Rostenkowski’s picture was right next to the definition of power-broker in the Congressional dictionary. Two years later, his picture was next to the word “crook”.
Rosty did what he had always done. He used his office as a way to get a little extra money for his family. The particular crime he was charged with was cashing in the stamps that his office had bought and using the money for his own personal pleasure.
It was penny-ante stuff. Minor corruption with a little bit of legal graft.
But after the downfall of Jim Wright, what passed for minor graft no longer passed the muster in the country or the media.
Everybody loves Charlie Wilson now – thanks to the book and the movie — but Wilson’s antics wouldn’t have survived in this ethics environment today. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Charlie Rangel, Charlie Wilson, CODELs, Congress, Fundraising, Jack Abramoff, Jim Wright, K Street, Lobbyist, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans
Posted in Fundraising, Government, Politics, Scandals | 2 Comments »
Charlie Rangel admitted yesterday that he isn’t very good with numbers. He took the blame for not paying his taxes, but being bad at numbers isn’t anything new for the Democratic Party.
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