Rangel and AIG
This certainly doesn’t look good to me:
The company has never made a contribution. But less than a month after Mr. Rangel met with its officials, the company turned to the congressman for help: A senior A.I.G. executive who had attended the fund-raising meeting wrote a letter directly to Mr. Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, urging him to support a provision of a tax bill that would save A.I.G. millions of dollars a year, according to Joseph M. Norton, a company spokesman.
Mr. Rangel’s exchange with A.I.G. last spring appears to be at odds with the public statements he has made since his fund-raising for the school became an issue. When his approach to A.I.G. was first reported in The Washington Post in July, Mr. Rangel said that he could not recall any issues his committee might have considered in which A.I.G. had an interest.
To be honest, this hardly seems like the most pernicious political quid pro quo in the universe. But there are lines of explicitness you can’t cross without getting in trouble, and certainly it doesn’t help when it turns out you’ve done things that “appear[] to be at odds with the public statements” you’ve made.
15 Responses to “Rangel and AIG”
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January 3rd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I’ve long been a fan of Charlie, but he really does seem to be dying a death of a thousand cuts…
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Contra Petey, I’ve never been a fan of Rangel, but this seems like a complete non-story to me. He is having a rough couple of months though.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Irrespective of anything Rangel may or may have done that is unethical, who is next in line for his positions in the House? Would these guys be better or worse than Rangel? Also, I’d be fine with having a new member from Rangel’s district, since he has been in Congress since 1971 and is not 78 years old. It might just be a good time for Rangel to move on.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:37 pm
It’s ‘Well done though good and faithful servant’ time.
Nunc dimittis, Charlie.
January 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I follow this stuff pretty closely for work, and I think this story hurts the reporter’s credibility. First, TONS of companies wanted the active financing rules extended — AIG was one among a great, great many.
Second, the big Dem on Ways and Means who was pushing for it was Richard Neal of Mass., who is head of the tax subcommittee on W&M. He has a lot of pull with Rangel; with others like Crowley lined up on Neal’s side, Rangel is likely to listen favorably.
Finally, the reporter makes the completely wrong claim that Senate leaders “revived” Rangel’s bill as part of the bailout compromise. They did not do that at all. Because of the constitutional requirement that tax bills start in the House, the Senate took Rangel’s bill (H.R. 6049), stripped all the language from it, and replaced it with a pure Senate creation. That was then shoved down the House’s throat as part of the bailout. The Senate never had a problem with extending active financing at all. And Rangel’s support or opposition, in the end, had next to nothing to do with the extension’s final passage.
Anyway, right is right — the other stuff this year is where the real meat is.
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