House Republicans say they'll press on with their efforts to dethrone House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel -- despite the fact that the Republican leading their charge now faces ethical issues of his own. Rep. John Carter failed to disclose nearly $300,000 in profits from oil stock sales in 2006-07, Roll Call reported Thursday.
| Whoops. |
| When's he resigning from the House? |
| When? and why? Was he caught, or did he realize he'd missed listing an item on his return? |
Republicans also noted that when Barack Obama was a senator, he failed to disclose $2,000 in capital gains from stock transactions in 2005. "My understanding is that many members, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, have made a similar oversight," said Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).
| "It does nothing to change the staggering array of charges facing Chairman Rangel or the speaker's responsibility to force him to step aside." |
But Democrats crowed over the news about Carter's misstep, saying it showed the hypocrisy of the GOP's efforts to force Rangel to give up his Ways and Means gavel. The New York Democrat has been the subject of a yearlong probe by the House ethics committee over his personal finances, including his use of multiple rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem building, the income from the Dominican home and his fundraising efforts for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York. "It looks like there's $300,000 worth of his own crap he left out of the witch hunt," one Democratic leadership aide gleefully said of Carter.
Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), a big Rangel supporter, called the revelations about Carter "ironic." "I'm not filing [an ethics] complaint, but I can't speak for others," Crowley added.
When asked about Carter's disclosure problems, Rangel paused, started to comment, then appeared to think better of it and declined to say anything more.
At issue is Carter's sale of Exxon stock in 2006 and 2007. Carter made $199,000 in profits in the 2006 transaction and an additional $97,000 the following year. The Texas Republican, a former state judge, didn't include those capital gains on either of his financial disclosure forms for those years. While Carter amended his 2007 return in mid-2008 to include "capital gains," he didn't specify the amount earned through the stock sale, which meant there was no way for the public to know how much he made in the transaction.
| So he fixed it as soon as he realized, instead of waiting to be caught. Not at all like Rep. Rangel, then. |
| Carter's office made his federal tax returns available for both years in order to demonstrate that he had fully paid taxes on the capital gains. |