Panel recommends censure for Rangel

WASHINGTON - The House ethics committee yesterday recommended censure for longtime Rep. Charles Rangel, suggesting that the Harlem Democrat suffer the embarrassment of standing before his colleagues while receiving an oral rebuke by the speaker for financial and fundraising misconduct.

Censure is the most serious congressional discipline short of expulsion. The House, which could change the recommended discipline, probably will consider it after Thanksgiving.

The ethics committee voted 9-1 to recommend censure and that Rangel pay any taxes owed on income from a villa in the Dominican Republic. The five Democrats and five Republicans on the panel deliberated for about three hours behind closed doors.

Earlier, at a sanctions hearing, Rangel, 80, apologized for his misconduct but said he was not a crooked politician out for personal gain. He was in the House hearing room when the ethics committee chairman, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), announced the recommendation.

Rangel said, "I hope you can see your way clear to indicate any action taken by me was not with the intention of bringing any disgrace on the House or enriching myself personally."

The ethics committee's chief counsel, Blake Chisam, had recommended censure. The ethics committee could have opted for lighter punishments, such as a reprimand, a fine or a report deploring the 20-term congressman's behavior.

Rangel ended the sanctions hearing with an emotional plea to salvage his reputation. Before speaking, Rangel spent several minutes trying to compose himself. He placed his hands over his eyes and chin, then slowly stood up and said in a barely audible voice: "I don't know how much longer I have to live."

Facing the committee members, he asked them to "see your way clear to say, 'This member was not corrupt.' " He continued: "There's no excuse for my behavior and no intent to go beyond what has been given to me as a salary. I apologize for any embarrassment I've caused you individually and collectively as a member of the greatest institution in the world."

After an investigation that began in 2008, Rangel was convicted Tuesday by a jury of his House peers on 11 of 13 charges of rules violations. He was found to have improperly used official resources to raise funds for an academic center named after him.

He also was found guilty of filing a decade's worth of misleading annual financial disclosure forms that failed to list hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, and failure to pay taxes on his villa in the Dominican Republic.