[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[House]
[Pages 21527-21533]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ETHICS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  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

[[Page 21528]]

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.

                              {time}  2030

  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

[[Page 21529]]

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.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman and the judge from Texas. I 
thank you, Judge Carter, for your leadership on this issue. And I know 
that it's hard for a lot of Members to come down to the floor and raise 
an issue that has to do with the ethics of any other Member. Whatever 
party they might be, if they're a Democrat or if they're a Republican, 
there's a certain restraint that exists in this House Chamber. And 
sometimes it's because Members are afraid that they or their agenda 
will be punished by a powerful committee Chair who holds a gavel.
  There are some, though--as you have done for 12 or 13 or more weeks--
that have stepped up here and stood on principle and talked about real 
ethics and talked about the standards of this House and the standards 
that we need to hold the other Members to--and ourselves to for that 
matter--regardless of the consequences that might come along within 
this circle of people that work together every day. We've got to be the 
ones that raise the standard of this House and hold it up.
  Now, if you have someone who is in charge of the IRS who doesn't pay 
their taxes, immediately they lose the moral authority to claim anyone 
else's tax money. That's the case with Tim Geithner. And it's a point 
that I think has been alluded to at least by the gentleman from Texas. 
And if you have the chairman of the most powerful committee in the 
House of Representatives, the Ways and Means Committee, and the lists 
of these questions, the ethical questions and the problems with his own 
taxes gets longer and longer after this--happy birthday, Chairman 
Rangel--a year since The New York Times called for the chairman to step 
down, Charlie Rangel to step down as chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee.
  And I can remember the excoriation that took place when Republicans 
were in the majority and Democrats were looking for anything that they 
could fabricate to allege against the people in power on this side. I 
remember constant attacks on Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who 
had something like 74 charges brought against him; every one of them 
specious, none of them substantive, and none of them stuck during all 
that period of time. But it was designed to focus on the person that 
held the most power here in the House of Representatives.
  And so that taints this. And people think that it's purely a 
political battle that's going on. Well, it's political in a lot of 
ways. Judge Carter talked about how political it is with 119 Members of 
the Democrat Caucus in the House of Representatives having received a 
campaign check from Charlie Rangel. When you have a majority--close to 
it anyway--near the majority of your own caucus that you've contributed 
to their campaign, somehow they just magically, over time, lose their 
conviction to stand up for pure ethics.
  And it's a shame, but the reality of the political world today is 
that it isn't just a matter of altruism, it isn't just people that come 
here--and many do come here to do the right thing; many come here 
because they want to help America; many come because they believe--
they're either liberals or conservatives or someplace in between, but 
they believe in what they do and they stand up and speak out about it. 
That sense of conviction, that sense of altruism is something that 
should be applauded and honored and respected whatever that judgment 
is, whether they're liberals or whether they're conservatives.
  I think a lot of America believes that that's what drives this House. 
I'd like to think it is, it's part of what drives this House. But 
another part that drives this House is political power, political 
patronage, campaign contributions. The influence that comes from being 
able to direct policy as chairman of a committee is a powerful thing, 
it's an influential thing. And why does Chairman Rangel have all that 
money to give to 119 Members of his own caucus? Because he controls the 
tax-writing committee. He controls a lot of the regulations that 
control the economy of the United States of America--at least the free 
market economy and what's left of it.
  And so there are those who disagree with the philosophy and the 
policy that Charlie Rangel drives as the man who holds the gavel 
chairing the Ways and Means Committee. And there are many people in 
this country, many companies, many corporations, many entities that 
will find a way to get checks into that campaign fund because they 
don't want to be punished. And that money gets delved out to Members of 
their own caucus. And the chairman forgets to pay his taxes and 
underestimates his liabilities and assets by more than half, including 
forgetting to report the income off of his villa property in the 
Dominican Republic and forgetting to report that he is receiving rent 
subsidy on apartment houses for years in New York City.
  The failure to report and pay taxes on rental income from the villa 
in the Dominican Republic is as clear as it can be. And was it an 
attack of conscience that Chairman Rangel had when he finally amended 
the statement? I think not, because to falsify those statements is a 
felony. But when the issue was raised by Judge Carter, by The New York 
Times, by a number of others, then the chairman stepped forward and 
amended his returns, and then amended them again--I actually don't know 
how many rounds it's been that those ethics reports or financial 
reports have been amended.
  But they're not, I can't envision, being amended because of an attack 
of conscience; they're being amended because the news media, John 
Carter, other Members have stepped forward and laid the facts out 
before the American people. They're being amended to avoid the 
embarrassment and perhaps the prosecution in order to comply

[[Page 21530]]

with and hopefully avoid an Ethics ruling when it comes out of the 
dysfunctional Ethics Committee in the House of Representatives.
  So I think it's pretty interesting that there is an alleged--this is 
one of the list of things that have emerged in the last year--an 
alleged quid pro quo of trading legislative action in exchange for 
donations to a center named for Charlie Rangel at City College of New 
York. I remember one of our Members, John Campbell from California, in 
particular, came down to the floor and offered an amendment to strike 
$1 million out that was earmarked for a center that was named after 
Charlie Rangel. And he asked Mr. Rangel, would you really ask that they 
name a center after you? And the answer was, essentially, I wouldn't 
want it to be named after you, Mr. Campbell, but yes, I've been here a 
long time, it's okay, I think we're allowed to do that.
  House Members don't do that. There are posthumous names for Federal 
buildings for Members of Congress, but it's very rare to find a Member 
of the House of Representatives to ask for real estate to be named 
after them; kind of a self-glorification. Quid pro quo? Possibly. It 
certainly raises a question.
  But trips to the Caribbean, this is something that's fairly 
astonishing. The gift rule violation, the trips to the Caribbean that 
were sponsored by the Carib News Foundation in 2007 and 2008, raised 
all kinds of questions. Now the chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee--which, by the way, shouldn't be in the business of trying to 
direct the IRS to examine anybody; he should be worried about national 
policy and how that affects on a broad perspective, not micromanaging 
and focusing on an IRS investigation. But he had the audacity to push 
for a crackdown on U.S. taxpayers who make honest mistakes on their own 
returns, and then on the heels of Secretary Geithner's crackdown of UBS 
depositors for failing to pay their own taxes. The timing of this 
couldn't be worse.
  And it goes on. The statement that I thought was really interesting 
was the Democrats' House of hypocrisy. They made a lot of allegations, 
but the House of hypocrisy--the IRS should investigate both Charlie 
Rangel and Tim Geithner. And the problem is Tim Geithner controls the 
IRS. And so if you control an entity, it's pretty unlikely that they're 
going to do a vigorous job of investigating the people that actually 
decide what's going to go on within the operation.
  The House Committee on Standards hasn't produced anything yet--that's 
the Ethics Committee. It's been dysfunctional for a long time. It took 
place that the former ranking member of the Ethics Committee, who is 
now the chairman of the Justice Appropriations Committee from West 
Virginia, funny--under investigation himself. And he holds the gavel 
that controls the appropriations to the people that are investigating 
him and he controls their purse strings, Alan Mollohan.
  Interesting. House of hypocrisy: Geithner controlling the IRS; 
Charlie Rangel controlling the Ways and Means and the tax code; the 
House Committee on Standards can't seem to move; the chairman, Charlie 
Rangel, has given campaign donations to three of the five Democrats on 
the Ethics Committee. Now, it should be unethical to make contributions 
from the House to Members on the Ethics Committee because, after all, 
especially if you're under investigation, surely that would turn the 
focus on him.
  And the other interesting thing--this is one that really stands out--
we had a little investigation going on on these Caribbean trips that 
are in question that Mr. Rangel was on. Well, it turns out that the 
chairman of the investigation of the Caribbean trips was also along on 
the trip, so he knows what was going on there. If he would have thought 
there was a problem, he would have blown the whistle at that time, one 
would think.
  This isn't the America that the people in this country pay for, that 
they want to have. It's not the America that the people I know deserve. 
This country is full of hardworking, honest, decent people, white 
collar and blue collar people, people that get their hands dirty every 
day, people that keep their hands clean and use their brain and their 
fingers and their computers or calculators, their telephones and their 
steering wheels, people that are down in the trenches, people that are 
in the meatpacking plants, people that are producing a product every 
single day, and they give up time away from their families and their 
homes and they pay their taxes and they comply with the regulations. 
And they fear the IRS coming into their kitchen or their office and 
doing an audit of them. And they respect the government.
  And we have a House of hypocrisy here where the chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee can't seem to get his own filings right on his own 
accounting forms, the rules that he writes, and has the audacity to 
turn up an IRS investigation on people that may not be.
  119 Democrats have received money from Charlie Rangel. Funny, the 
Ethics Committee can't move. Three of the five Democrats on the Ethics 
Committee seem to have received money from Charlie Rangel.

                              {time}  2045

  So I would just say this: that we've got to clean this House up. 
We've got to end this House of hypocrisy. If anyone is under 
investigation, under question, and if the chairman of a committee and 
if the Speaker of the House can't see fit to bring the right kind of 
decorum and the right kind of decency and when a liberal newspaper like 
The New York Times is indignant at this House of Representatives--the 
House of hypocrisy run by Speaker Pelosi--and is thumbing its nose at 
the people of the United States of America, if The New York Times can 
see it, I guarantee you the people in my district can see it. They know 
it in Iowa. They know it in Texas. They know it in the heartland of 
America. They know it across the red zones of America. Everybody who 
gets up, who goes to work, who punches a time clock, who earns a 
salary, who pays his taxes, who carries his weight, and who contributes 
to this country understands that we've got to have a Nation that's a 
rule of law.
  You can't write enough laws to make a decent people out of an 
indecent people. You can't cure hypocrisy by covering it up. At some 
place, at some time, somebody has got to dig up that rotting corpse, 
and it's going to have to have the light of day shine upon it. When 
that happens, we'll learn the truth, and there will be a day when the 
American people rise up again as they did last Saturday, when they came 
into this city by the hundreds of thousands.
  Hundreds of thousands of people came to Washington, D.C., on Saturday 
and registered their rejection and their contempt for the profligate 
overspending that has taken place in this Congress, for the corruption 
that's here and for the House of hypocrisy that it is. They want clean, 
decent people, like they are, representing them in this Congress. 
Between them, they have the solutions to everything that's wrong with 
America. They aren't all good ideas, but among them are all the ideas 
that we need to solve the problems that we have.
  We need to listen to the American people. We need to listen to the 
Founding Fathers. We need to be re-anchored back to the Declaration and 
to the Constitution. We have got to reform our fiscal responsibility. 
We have got to take this IRS out of our lives and get back our freedom. 
We have got to give people school choice. We have got to make sure that 
the younger generations learn it right and that they learn about God 
and country--our true history--and about our Founding Fathers, about 
personal responsibility and about the price for freedom and what 
freedom is and about the pillars of American exceptionalism.
  This House of hypocrisy is not a pillar of American exceptionalism. 
It is a corrosive entity that undermines the pillars of American 
exceptionalism. We must clean it up. It needs to happen now. Why not on 
the first anniversary of The New York Times' calling for the 
resignation of Charlie Rangel as the chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee? As my father always said, there is no time like the present.

[[Page 21531]]

  I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I yield back the balance of my 
time.
  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

[[Page 21532]]

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.

                              {time}  2100

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas.
  And listening to the dialogue here on floor, I have to also rise in 
defense of the individual that everybody knows here is a true 
gentleman, a true Southern gentleman, and that's Congressman Joe Wilson 
of South Carolina. Anybody that knows Joe knows that he is the 
consummate officer and a gentleman.
  He comes from generations of military personnel. He has four sons 
that have served in the military. And Joe spends his life and his time 
respecting others, respecting our military people who serve this 
country. And I have never known Joe to be anything other than a 
respectful, polite, gentleman, and, yet, duty, honor, country.
  He was offended by what he heard here in the House of 
Representatives. And, for me, so was I.
  The President of the United States came into the House of 
Representatives, as our guest, and stood here at the podium, here in 
the well, from the rostrum of the Speaker, and he threw the first 
stone. And he said, the prominent politicians had lied, and he began to 
tell how. That's how this was set up.
  The President threw the first blow in here as a guest of the House of 
Representatives. And Joe Wilson, a man of honor, was offended at that, 
instantaneously. It was an instinctive thing, if you know the man.
  And, also, so was the instinct to go to the phone immediately after 
the speech and call the White House and do what he did. That's enough. 
There doesn't need to be more, and the people in this House that are 
seeking to gain a partisan advantage and turn this into a circus over 
two words that probably were said a lot of other times that night here 
in the House of Representatives too, but they were covered by the other 
chatter, that happened to be two words that went into a pause of 
silence, and the timing of it really was unfortunate.
  But I don't think Joe Wilson was unique in his emotion. It just 
happened to be made clear and embellished by the press. And so I don't 
make excuses for that and neither does he.
  But if the President of the United States accepts an apology, no 
other person has any grounds to request redress beyond that point. And 
this House of Representatives shall not be turned into a circus to deal 
with minutiae because Democrats in this country have decided to run 
this country over the cliff into socialized medicine. And they can't 
sell it to the American people, so they want to change the subject. 
That's what it is.
  And, by the way, the President of the United States injected himself 
into an incident that took place up in Boston when a professor at 
Harvard was breaking into his own house and the neighbors, out of good 
will, called the cops and Officer Crowley showed up, and the President 
himself made intemperate remarks.
  They were emotional, they were knee-jerk and they show his bias--no 
really bias in Joe except duty, honor country, truth, justice in the 
American way. That's not a bias; that's an altruistic belief system 
that's in the gentleman Joe Wilson.
  But the President injected himself and injected race into that 
situation up in Boston with the professor and the police officer, and 
he invited them out to the White House for a beer. And so it became a 
global story about how the President's masterful diplomacy brought 
everybody together at the White House. And we all knew what kind of 
beer everybody drank sitting there at the picnic table sitting 
outside--I actually don't know if they drank any. We know that they 
served it.
  Well, so the President has accepted Joe Wilson's apology, and we are 
watching, through the majority whip, drive a resolution towards the 
floor tomorrow to try to excoriate a Southern gentleman.
  And the President is sitting there now, having accepted the apology, 
and all he has to do is tell Rahm Emanuel, pick up the phone, call up 
there and talk to Clyburn or Pelosi or Steny Hoyer, the majority 
leader, and call off the dogs. We don't need this circus on the floor 
of the House of Representatives over something that may or may not have 
offended the President of the United States.
  But that's over because he has accepted the apology. So now if we 
have a circus on the floor of the House, and the President doesn't come 
in and be a referee--and maybe call for a beer summit, so invite Joe 
Wilson out to the White House, that's what I would like to see happen--
if the President doesn't call for that you have to wonder if he isn't 
secretly sitting there watching the fight, enjoying it, enjoying the 
circus that they are staging for tomorrow.
  The circus itself will bring disgrace on the House of 
Representatives, and it's designed to cover this House of hypocrisy 
that we have. But instead it will illuminate it. And as the judge was 
saying about the rule of law, when I write rule of law, I capitalize 
it. Rule of law, R and L, capitalize it, in everything I write. 
Sometimes the staff slips by, but I get it in there, because I have 
such reverence for the rule of law.
  And if we are going to be a Nation that functions, we all have got to 
have reverence for the rule of law. And if you look at some of these 
other countries that have some gifts and some blessings that look like 
they might be comparable to that of the United States and you wonder 
what's wrong, why can't Russia get their act together. Why can't Mexico 
get their act together and go there and look.
  I can go almost anywhere in the world and tell you what I think we 
ought to do at least to fix it. But I can go to those places, and I 
can't tell what you ought to do. Because I don't know how to fix 
corruption.
  When corruption is endemic in the culture of a country, you cannot 
have enough law enforcement officers. You cannot clean it up. It's got 
to be something that is a habit of the heart of the culture of the 
people.
  We have had that throughout these centuries in the United States of 
America. And the things that threaten it, it isn't just a reflection of 
the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that has this whole list 
of ethical problems, including tax avoidance, and that's the nicest way 
I can say that. It isn't just that. It's the culture that supports it.
  It's the Speaker of the House that enables it. It's the majority 
leader that backs it up. It's the fact that we are dealing with this 
House of hypocrisy while we are trying to set standards for the people 
of the United States of America and saying be altruistic, pay your 
taxes, follow through and do your part. And if you do that, we are a 
greater country.
  But if people decide to take the Charlie Rangel/Tim Geithner route, 
we can't have enough enforcement officers out there working for the IRS 
to go out and collect enough taxes to go out and run this government. 
It's got

[[Page 21533]]

to be because people have great respect and reverence for the rule of 
law, and it should start here. This should be the highest standard in 
the House of Representatives.
  But if I go to Mexico or if I go to Russia, I see there are natural 
resources, I see a good labor force, people that are pretty good 
workers--more so I think in Mexico than Russia from my observations, 
but they also were used to payola. They are used to payoffs. They don't 
think they can make a difference. They don't think their voice matters.
  And when it gets to that point in the country where people don't 
believe any longer that their voice matters, and if they don't believe 
in the people that are making the decisions for them, and if they don't 
willingly comply with the laws and pay their taxes, then it all becomes 
a whole nation of gotcha, and who was the victim of enforcement, and 
who knew how to pay somebody off that had influence so they can avoid 
doing the right thing. And that might be paying taxes. It might be 
completely violating it in a violent way, just plain out and out theft.
  If they can get by with it, if they have influence, the rule of law. 
The rule of law is the central pillar of American exceptionalism. 
Without it, we would have never become the unchallenged greatest Nation 
in the world.
  But we are, because of that central pillar, the rule of law. Now, 
there are many other pillars, but the central pillar is a rule of law, 
and we have got to respect it.
  And if you don't like the law, we will run for office or support 
somebody that does and ask them to change it. That's why we have this 
system. We have amendments to the Constitution. We don't like the 
Constitution, find a way to amend it.
  If the people speak, we are supposed to listen here. Hundreds of 
thousands showed up in Washington D.C. over this past weekend. And we 
need to hear what they have to say.
  But they want to respect their elected Representatives. They want the 
rule of law to adhere to. They don't want to see this country flooded 
over with the level of corruption that we have seen in places like 
Mexico and Russia, or I go there and I think, what can be done?
  I can prescribe the solutions that I think are very constructive to 
those countries, but if you could snap your fingers and get rid of the 
corruption in those countries, that would be the biggest thing that 
could be done. And then the people would have hope; they would have 
faith again. They would believe again that their government was 
responsible and responsive to them.
  But the rule of law--and I think about how important it is to comply 
with the letter and the intent of the law, not just avoid prosecution, 
not just find a way to skirt around the edge of it, respect and revere 
the law and comply with the letter and the intent of the law.
  And I had this little thought that popped up into my head--I was 
listening to the judge talk about this--this little phrase recurs back 
to me: no controlling legal authority. Do you remember that?
  The Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, said, well there is 
no controlling legal authority. So, therefore, if there isn't any way 
that you can control his activities by enforcing a law that one can 
point to, therefore, whatever he might do apparently is acceptable or 
maybe even moral.
  In the absence of prohibition, things become moral in this era of 
morals relativism.
  I reject that. We have got to have high standards, high standards of 
conscience, high standards of morality, and our laws uphold those 
standards. And the people on the left will constantly argue you can't 
legislate morality.
  Well, but if you de-legislate the morality that others legislated, 
now you have, now you have lowered the standard. Now you have lowered 
the bar. And now people believe it's acceptable, and it has happened 
over and over again. Our legislation is morality. Our legislation, the 
laws of America, the laws of our States and our local subdivisions 
uphold the moral standards of the people that pass them.
  It's often our faith; our Judeo-Christian values are what shaped this 
country. The Declaration and the Constitution are infused with Judeo-
Christian values. And those values are part of the culture reflected in 
the documents, not the documents that drove the culture.
  And if we lose our culture, the documents will become meaningless to 
us. That's why we have got to stand up for the rule of law here on the 
floor of the House of Representatives, and everybody in America has to 
stand up for the rule of law, the letter and the intent of law, and the 
moral and ethical foundation that underpins it, or we lose our way, and 
we lose our country.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for that impassioned speech. We 
have about 5 minutes more left.
  So I make it very clear, I don't think I made it clear, but Roll Call 
newspaper reported on August 25 some of these issues with Mr. Rangel.
  I am going to go through them very quickly. He filed an amended 
return about his 2007 assets and income disclosing more than $600,000 
in assets, tens of thousands of dollars in income, that he had failed 
to report. He failed to report, for instance, a Congressional Federal 
Credit Union, which is just right down the hall from us here, account 
of at least $250,001; an investment fund account also worth at least 
$250,001.
  He originally claimed assets of $516,000 to $1.316 million. Now he 
has revised it to $1.028 million to $2.5 million.
  And once again he failed to report the income on his Dominican 
Republic account. He failed to report investments that netted him 
between 29,000 and 81,000 in capital gains dividends and in rental 
income when he previously claimed between 6,000 and 17,000.
  He failed to report his investment in certain stocks, at least 1,001 
of Yum brands; 15,001 in PepsiCo; and 250,001 in funds of Allianz 
Global Investors Consults Diversified Port III, half the limit, number 
three.
  He failed to report rental income, and that's on top of the multiple 
allegations we have been talking about. It's time for a Member that 
justice must be swift and justice delayed is justice denied.
  I ask the leadership of this House to move this process, reconcile 
these issues of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and let's 
resolve this crisis of this House so we can no longer be called the 
House of hypocrisy.

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