NY paper implores Rangel to resign

The Buffalo News is asking Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to resign.

 

The newspaper holds nothing back this morning in an editorial criticizing Rangel, who recently failed to report at least $500,000 in outside income on financial disclosure forms, to resign his office.

"Charlie Rangel always has been an entertaining congressman. And not to damn him with faint praise, an effective one, too. But the New York City representative, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is having a problem with his numbers as they relate to the truth. He now can be neither entertaining nor effective. He needs to go. If he won’t, Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to push him.

"It’s the same old story for Rangel, who last year reluctantly acknowledged what he described as an inadvertent failure to report $75,000 in rental income for a beachfront property in the Dominican Republic. Then, many critics—including this page—called on him to step down from his chairmanship, at least until his professed innocence could be established. He didn’t."

It was Rangel's second lapse that pushed the newspaper to demand Rangel's ouster. "The odds of simple error fall to near zero when it happens twice, and when both times are in your financial favor," the staff wrote. "We’d feel better about it if he accidentally paid taxes on more than he is worth, rather than less."

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