Oh Those Ethical Dems...Charlie Rangel Underestimated His Net Worth By About Half

Mistakes were made, nothing to see here.

Why would you expect the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to be honest about things like this?

Rangel's amended disclosure statement for 2007 reports new assets worth between $647,000 and $1.38 million. That raises the value of his holdings to between $1.03 million and $2.95 million.

Assets missing from Rangel's original 2007 disclosure, filed in May 2008, include a Congressional Federal Credit Union IRA worth between $250,001 and $500,000; four mutual fund accounts worth between $365,004 and $750,000, and PepsiCo and Yum! Brands stock valued between $16,002 and $65,000.

...A Rangel source said there are "good explanations" for why Rangel didn't report those holdings and "he'll answer those questions in due time" - after the House ethics committee completes its nearly year-long probe of the powerful Democratic Ways and Means Committee chairman.

"The congressman is confident there was no effort to hide anything," the source added.

It's one thing to mess up (yeah, let's be charitable) your House disclosure forms, what about his tax returns?

Don't forget that Rangel is one of the leading figures in writing the health care bill. Clearly we need a guy this on the ball, with this kind of command of detail reorganizing over 15% of the US economy. What could possibly go wrong?

Tim Geithner emails to say: "Charlie and I form a dedicated team to ensuring a fair tax code that all Americans can support. We work diligently to enforce all aspects of the law".

posted by DrewM. at 10:05 AM

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