Posts Tagged ‘Charlie Rangel’

Payback

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...

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No cash, no campaigns

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...

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Life is Complicated For Speaker Pelosi

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...

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Why Pelosi Stuck With Rangel

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...

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Getting Caught in The Changing Times

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...

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