Ethics

Floor Speech

Ethics

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Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, as some people might know and some of my colleagues know, I have been appearing before this House for the leadership hour now for approximately 12 weeks, and I have been talking about this House of hypocrisy that we seem to be thriving in here as we have all of these issues that involve multiple people concerning ethical issues, and in some instances maybe even criminal issues that need to be addressed. I have raised the issue because I want to remind the leadership of this House that if we don't address these issues, we are failing in our duty as Members of Congress.

As we sit here with the Democrat majority blasting Joe Wilson for a very inadvertent outcry in the House of Representatives, we seem to have forgotten what I have been talking about for the last 12 weeks which is Chairman Charlie Rangel's decades of tax evasion and ethics violations that have been raised over and over on the floor of this House. This is the ultimate of hypocrisy. So I am going to talk about it again tonight. I think it is important that we listen.

It is important to also know this has not just started in the last few months. Today is a very important day. This is September 15, I believe. Close to it anyway. On September 15, 2008, the New York Times, certainly not one of the more conservative newspapers, and I don't think anyone would consider them a Republican newspaper, called for the resignation of Chairman Rangel as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee because of the allegations that he himself had pointed out to this House on the floor of this House of his failure to report certain items of value and failure to pay taxes on about $75,000 worth of income that he realized in the Dominican Republic on a vacation home that he owned there and rented out. He rightfully said he was going to correct that by paying the taxes and amending his return and that he felt bad about it, and that he had turned himself in to the Ethics Committee.

Well, this turning yourself in to the Ethics Committee is almost the hypocrite's dream because you say I want you to judge me. Well, are they? They have had a year now. This was turned in to the Ethics Committee a year ago. We were promised when this new Congress started, we were promised in the fall of last year by the Speaker of this House, Nancy Pelosi, that she was sure that all of the Rangel issues would be resolved by the first or second week of January of this year. And yet they are still not resolved.

The Ethics Committee's job is to be the charging body in this Congress, and they are to look into these allegations and they are to make decisions. It is our method of policing ourselves. Quite frankly, when you find your method of policing yourself has failed, and I would argue 1 year on one person is pretty close to failure, then maybe we need to come up with a new system. Maybe we need to come up with a new way. Maybe we are not capable of policing ourselves.

There have been bodies like bar associations and medical associations that have historically policed up their own members; and other associations, certified public accountants, architects, and others have boards that police up their members. If they do a good job, they should be commended. And if they fail, they should be condemned. There is an old adage in the law, and having spent the vast majority of my life in the trial court in Texas, serving 20 years on a trial bench as a district judge, for 20 years prior to my coming to Congress 8 years ago, I can tell you we have an adage that justice delayed is justice denied. That is why we have things like speedy trial acts in the courts of America where a defendant can say I want this case brought to trial within a set time period because justice delayed is justice denied.

That's why we have multiple terms of grand juries and we promote the grand jury process to move cases along through the system so we can deal with felony criminal cases in an opportune way so justice is not delayed. Therefore, justice is not denied. That is why we come up with alternative forms of resolution of disputes in the courthouse because our civil dockets and our family law dockets get so bogged down in numbers that justice becomes delayed; and, therefore, justice is denied.

Well, I would argue that when one man stands at that microphone and for about an hour confesses his transgressions to this House, defended by the speech and debate clause of the Constitution, and states in no uncertain terms that he had made some serious errors and he was going to correct them and that he was turning it over to the Ethics Committee to get it resolved, then he has not been fairly treated by the Ethics Committee not resolving this. That is one of the things that I want to point out. I am about resolution of disputes. I am about solving these types of things that put an evil light upon this House of Representatives.

We have enough trouble with the public right now. Our poll numbers are terrible. But the reality is that the history of this place calls upon us to be honorable people. We address each other as honorable people. And if you are going to be an honorable person, then we have to have a means of recourse when honor is challenged even if you challenge it yourself. And I would argue that our methods that we are using right now in the Ethics Committee are failing this House of Representatives and the leadership whose committee it is is failing this House of Representatives. This needs to be resolved.

When we talked about this 1 year ago, we heard about Mr. Rangel's issues concerning the rent that he failed to report as income, and he announced to us that he was paying the taxes and would pay any penalties and interest that may be assessed against him. Later we learned that he paid taxes but he didn't pay any penalties and interest because they weren't assessed against him. That looked to me like the IRS was giving special privileges to Mr. Rangel. Why would they do that? Could it be because he is the chairman of the committee that oversees the IRS and the chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws of this Nation? It could be, but that is not right. That is not the way it ought to be. Just because 652,000 Americans decide to send one of us to Congress, does that mean that we have special rights that others in this country do not have? No, it does not. And we need to stand up and say so. We go through that same line everybody else does at the airport. We get our pockets emptied at the airport, and we go through the magnetometer just like everybody else at the airport, and we should. We are not different than anybody else in the United States.

And yet I think it is totally, totally inappropriate for the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who has admitted that he failed for years to pay taxes on income that he received in the Dominican Republic, that he should not be assessed penalties and interest. For 10 years I practiced law in Texas, and I represented a lot of people who had trouble with the IRS. And I always saw when we finished it up and resolved their issues, penalties and interest. In many instances, the penalties and interest were more than the taxes. And Mr. Rangel, and I don't have exact numbers, but it was for a period of 10 or 15 years that he didn't pay on this income. Why

shouldn't he pay penalties and interest?

So I wrote him a letter. I said very respectfully, Mr. Chairman, I am sure that you do not want to be treated any differently than any other American. I would request that you speak to the IRS and ask them to assess the appropriate penalties and interest, and that you pay them. I received no reply to that.

So I introduced a bill that I call the Rangel rule. The Rangel rule says very simply if you owe penalties and interest on income that you fail to pay, when you pay that tax, write on your tax form ``exercising the Rangel rule'' and you as an American citizen will be treated the same as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

I thought that was fair. I thought that was just. It is still in the hopper. I am perfectly willing, if the leadership of this House will bring it up, to put it to a vote of my colleagues, and we might be surprised; the Rangel rule might actually become law. But we should at least have that find of fair treatment for Americans, the same kind of fair treatment we expect to have. We don't expect people in this Congress to get different treatment.

That is what I have been talking about, failing to report. We have to file a report every year. It is required by law. It is like an oath, and if you violate that oath, there are consequences of violating that oath. You basically swear this is what I owe, this is what I made. This is dividend income or interest income, or whatever. We sign and swear to that. That would at least make it subject to perjury. And we file it every year.

Now the complaint that we give ranges is true. You can report that I own property that is worth between $250,000 and $500,000, and you don't know exactly what end of that rainbow you are talking about, that that is the range. I didn't write the forms; those are the forms. But if you fail to report it, you are given a certain amount of time to amend it. That is fair. People can miss something. And many of the things that Mr. Rangel talked to us about when he talked on the floor of this House was the things that he didn't report. That is good. He was being honest with the American people and with the Members of this House. He turned that over to the Ethics Committee, too. I assume that he filed the amended reports. And that is sort of what we have been trying to get resolved before the Ethics Committee, is this something that should be sanctionable by the House? The Ethics Committee's job is to tell us that. We have certain sanctions that this House can have. They are set out in our rules. Those rules were given to us by Thomas Jefferson, a fairly famous scholar and famous Democrat. We have got these rules, we have these sanctions, and that committee is supposed to function to start the process.

Today is the first anniversary of the process starting for that, just what I told you so far.

But since then, since that time other things have come forward. In fact, recently, other things have come forward. Mr. Rangel has been found, in many newspaper articles that have been coming out about this, in a potential additional violation of underreporting income and assets in 2007 by more than half, including the failure again to report the income from his Caribbean resort property. He has aides that work for him that also failed to file these reports and failed to disclose this information.

His lease of a multi rent-controlled apartment was part of the discussions that took place at that time. He is using his House parking space as a storage place for a car he didn't want to pay to be stored. His failure to report or pay taxes on his rental income in the Dominican Republic, the alleged quid pro quo trading legislation action in exchange for the new Rangel Center and College and New York College. All of these things are part of previous accusations. But now we have new properties, brand new retirement accounts, brand new investment accounts, five different investment accounts that, oops, we just discovered those. And we've just discovered rental properties over in Brooklyn, New York, and over in New Jersey, just discovered and have just come out in the newspapers. And there's article after article after article.

As we celebrate this anniversary, here are some of the things that are out there. We just talked about some of them, the parking spot and all those things. There is also a trip taken by Mr. Rangel and others to the Caribbean; it was paid for by lobbyists when we had a firm promise by the Speaker and the leadership of this House, the Democrat leadership, that this was a new Congress, they were draining the swamp. Well, the swamp is not drained; in fact, we're knee deep in alligators right now. But the draining of the swamp was there would be no more lobbyists paying for trips, when we have multiple Members of this House, including Mr. Rangel, who went on a lobbyist-paid trip where they are on film thanking the individual lobbyists for their contributions to the trip.

People say, why isn't this working? Why isn't this Ethics Committee working? And of course the newspapers, who like to speculate, have pointed out that three of the five Democrat members on the Ethics Committee have received major campaign donations from CHARLIE RANGEL. We asked why Speaker Pelosi hasn't taken a hand in this and we found out 119 Democrats have been given money by Mr. Rangel for their next campaign. And so he's a source of funds for the majority party here in this House, and that may be it, but we don't know.

But you know what? What this is all about is I am sick and tired of everybody being lumped together as evil people in this House. And therefore, justice delayed is justice denied, and it's time we address some of these issues.

I am joined by my friend, who is a classmate of mine, from Iowa. He is one of the stars of this floor because when he speaks, he speaks from the heart. Brother KING, tell us what you've got to say. I will yield you what time you may need.

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Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for everything he had to say, and I agree with everything he said.

I want to say something that is concerning me. It has come to my attention, through the rumors that have spread around the Halls of Congress, that some are saying this issue that I have raised about Mr. Rangel has something to do with his race. I want to make it very clear: I spent 20 years on the bench. I believe in that Lady Justice who stands there with that blindfold. I can tell you in no uncertain terms--and I will leave it up to the people in my district, and you can check with them--that I never gave a sentence to a criminal defendant based upon his race nor did I even see the color of his skin. I based it upon his behavior, and the behavior that needed punishing I certainly punished. It had nothing to do with the race of anybody. When people start accusing someone of being a racist because he raises an issue of right and wrong, there's something wrong in this House of Representatives.

I bring this up now because I would hope this wouldn't happen, but if it does, I stand ready, willing and able to point out that this has absolutely nothing to do with race.

By the way, Mr. Rangel isn't the only Member of this Congress whom I have spoken against and said that we needed to do something about. I just had to get that off my chest. Before this stuff starts, I want you to know the race card has nothing to do with what I'm trying to do on the floor of the House. I'm trying to see that we get justice at this level.

Mr. King pointed out the fact that the Chairman of the IRS has got issues of not paying taxes. Who is going to go after him? The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee has issues of all sorts, which we've talked about here. Who is going to go after him? Well, I'll tell you who can--the Justice Department.

You know, when there are allegations of improper behavior, if those things rise to the level of criminal behavior, it is the duty and responsibility of the Justice Department to investigate, and I think the Justice Department should. It's supposed to be like that Lady Justice--blind to the political ramifications and going forward based only upon doing justice. That's why it is called the ``Justice Department.'' If there are issues here that people see, the Justice Department ought to do something about it.

This Congress has the ability to hold hearings on these issues, and they have the ability to hold hearings on the other issues that have been talked about here tonight, and it's about time we did it. We have issues of major proportions that are being totally ignored by this House. This has become the House of hypocrisy, as Mr. King said. There are those who accused others of a culture of corruption just 2 years ago and actually, blatantly, stepped forward on the floor of this House and admitted so. Now, as the corruption is being exposed, all of a sudden, we don't hear anything more about that. It is hypocrisy. I wanted to bring that up because it's important.

I've spent my lifetime trying to be like that Lady Justice--blind as to who you're dealing with. If people will think back, I have said the reason I stand here tonight is because the rule of law is the glue that underpins the very basic foundation of this Republic, and if we let the rule of law be forgotten or to be discarded and if we, as a people, are not bound together by those agreed laws we've agreed to through our legislative process and if political power or influence changes that, then we're no different than a banana republic. Therefore, nothing is more sacred to the basic premises of a Republican form of government and a democracy than that all people, no matter what their statuses, are bound by the law.

Together, we just sent a man who stole in a Ponzi scheme billions of dollars from people around the world. Do you know what? It speaks to the American system. He is in prison tonight. That's the rule of law, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

So, when we talk about this--and occasionally I do--I smile and have fun with the Rangel rule, but the reality is, if we surrender the rule of law, we surrender our freedom and we surrender our Nation. We just can't do it. With all the political back-and-forth that may go on on the floor of this House, I believe in my heart--and

I hope in my heart--that every person who sits in these seats is about standing up for the rule of law. If they are not, they don't belong here, because the rule of law is the glue that holds our society and our Republic together. It's very simple. It's not a complex issue. It's that people, as a people, decide to govern themselves with certain rules and regulations that are required of us as citizens. It's what we promise to do by being good citizens. So we're not going to take a handgun and walk across the street and rob the grocery store, because that is disruptive, and society has decided we're not going to tolerate that. That armed robbery in Texas will put you in prison for life, and believe me, I can tell you several people who know that very fact.

There's a reason we have laws: They hold our society together. It's not a law that says the poor immigrant gets the prison sentence and the rich executive does not. If they both break the law and the punishment is prison, they both ought to go to prison because that's the rule of law.

So, when we have issues that affect the rule of this House and, maybe, the rules of law of this Nation--right now, I'm talking about the rules of the people's House. This is the House of the people. This is the only House of the people. Don't let those Senators fool you, okay? They're not the House of the people. This is the House of the people. If someone dies in this House or is removed or leaves office in the middle of a term, nobody appoints his replacement. It is unlawful to appoint his replacement, because the Constitution of these United States says this is the House that is elected by the people. If we have a Senator die, the States can have a rule which says the Governor--and in fact, my State has that rule. If a Senator dies or leaves office in the middle of the term, our Governor gets to appoint a replacement Senator until such time as an election is held, and most States have something along those lines, which means they're not necessarily placed in that office by the people. That's the difference. When we say this is the House of the people, this is the only House of the people.

If we can't abide by our own rules when we are in charge of making those rules that govern life in America, what kind of example is that? Maybe these folks who've been in the streets for the last couple of weeks, who've been marching and yelling and fussing about Congress, have got something to fuss about; because the truth is, if we can't govern our own House, how can we be expected to govern our Nation?

I have been pointing out to the Democrat leadership of this House, who has this responsibility--you know, when you're in the majority, you govern. When we were in the majority, we governed. Governing is hard. It's harder than being in the minority. In the minority, you can just vote your conscience, and that's what we all should do anyway, but in the majority, you're responsible for the results just like whoever sits in the White House is responsible for the results.

Well, if we can't even figure out our own little rules and make our own little rules happen, how can we make laws that are responsible for the results that affect the people in Iowa or the people in Texas or the people in Louisiana or the people in Oregon or the people in Maine? How can the people have confidence if we can't even take care of our own business?

By the way, an issue is coming up, I think, in this House. Whether you're for it or against it, Joe Wilson made an outcry the other night, and he knows and has admitted that he should not have done that. In the heat of emotion, he made an outcry while the President was speaking. Joe is a very honorable man, and he immediately apologized to the President of the United States, and he immediately, in writing, apologized to the White House and to the Vice President. Now there's another street rumor that a privileged resolution is going to be filed on the floor of this House to censure Mr. Wilson before this Congress.

Of course, it's kind of interesting that the process is normally done through privileged resolutions, but there's usually some involvement by the Ethics Committee. I don't see any here. The Speaker has already said she didn't think it was appropriate to do this, and she made public statements that we should move on with health care and that he has apologized. I read that in the newspaper. Yet we're going forward on this. Then I'm crying for 12 weeks about really offensive behavior: When you pay your taxes, don't you think the guy who runs the Ways and Means Committee ought to pay his taxes? I don't see anybody jumping up, except the one time I did, and offering a privileged resolution. Mine was tabled on party lines and didn't get addressed, but I find it curious. I think Joe Wilson has apologized. He has acted like a gentleman, and I think that's where it ought to be. I agree with Speaker Pelosi's statements of 3 days ago to the press that we should move on. We'll see, but I hope we don't do that because it's just going to add, I say, to the hypocrisy of what we're talking about.

I yield back to my friend from Iowa.

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