House Republicans Urge Rangel To Quit Committee

WASHINGTON — The House Republican leadership is calling on Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem to step down as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee amid a series of investigations into his personal finances.

The office of Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio released a letter sent yesterday afternoon to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, urging her to "insist" that Mr. Rangel resign his post while the inquiries are ongoing. "Given Chairman Rangel's continuing ethical lapses, he cannot effectively carry out his duties as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee," the Republicans write.

The letter adds to pressure on Mr. Rangel, who has already asked the House Ethics Committee to initiate three investigations into his personal and political activity. Earlier this month, his attorney acknowledged that he had failed to report at least $75,000 in income from a vacation home in the Dominican Republic, and he also has been forced to address the disclosure that he has four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, including one that he may have inappropriately used as a campaign office. The third inquiry, also initiated by Mr. Rangel after a report in the Washington Post, focuses on his use of official congressional stationery to solicit donations to an academic center at City College named in his honor.

The call comes as Congress begins a final three-week legislative session before recessing for the year.

The Republicans in their letter sought to tie Mr. Rangel's political and financial woes to their broader criticism of Democratic inaction on energy and the economy. They had hammered Democrats for going forward with a scheduled congressional recess last month instead of voting on a Republican-backed energy bill, and they suggested that Mr. Rangel would be too distracted by scandal to do his job.

Representatives for both Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Rangel said Republicans were merely playing politics. "Congressman Boehner is exhibiting the very rush to judgment and hyper-partisanship that he used to condemn," Mr. Rangel's attorney, Lanny Davis, said, referring to the ethical controversies that have roiled Republicans in recent years.

He said categorically that Mr. Rangel would not relinquish his chairmanship, which he attained last year after the Democrats won control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

But in a sign of the seriousness of the situation, Mr. Rangel is sending a letter to Mrs. Pelosi laying out the facts surrounding his ownership of a resort villa in the Dominican Republic. The congressman reportedly did not report rental income from the property and secured a mortgage on it from a development company in which one of his donors, Theodore Kheel, was an investor. Mr. Rangel also will file an amended tax return.

The congressman has scheduled a press conference for this morning to address his finances, and Mr. Davis said he would answer any and all questions from reporters.

The Republicans have tried to make Mr. Rangel's troubles a campaign issue this fall, and over the summer Mr. Boehner introduced a resolution to censure him on the House floor. The measure failed, and 40 Republicans crossed party lines to back Mr. Rangel. "He ought to be embarrassed," Mr. Davis said of the Republican leader.

"Congressman Rangel trusts the bipartisan House Ethics Committee to focus on the facts and not the innuendo that Mr. Boehner relies on," Mr. Davis said.

A spokesman for the speaker, Brendan Daly, echoed that line. "The American people would be better served if Republicans would stop playing politics and allow the bipartisan Ethics Committee to do its job," he said. "This letter demonstrates that Republican leaders have no confidence in their members serving on the Ethics Committee and that they will do anything to divert attention away from the continuing fallout of the Abramoff scandal and the price the Republican Party is continuing to pay for its culture of corruption."

When the House Ethics Committee will take up the inquiries into Mr. Rangel is not clear. The panel's Democratic chairwoman, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio, died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage last month and has yet to be replaced.