The Rangel mess provides one more tangible reason for the country’s overall disenchantment and disgust with the management of Congress.

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Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has a Charles Rangel problem.  All Democrats in the House have a Charles Rangel problem.  President Obama has a Charles Rangel problem.

Their Charles Rangel problem is ethics and corruption, government ethics and corruption, Democratic ethics and corruption.

Mr. Rangel, who represents New York’s 15th District, has been in the House since 1971, the senior member of the New York delegation.  More important, since 2007, he has been Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (ubiquitously referred to as powerful) – which writes federal tax law. 

The problem is not going to disappear as a result of Mr. Rangel, on March 3, taking a “leave-of-absence” from that Chairmanship.

Last week, the House ethics committee admonished Mr. Rangel for violating gift rules by taking several corporate-sponsored Caribbean trips in 2007 and 2008.  That is the first finding by the ethics committee against Mr. Rangel.

Several additional investigations – of more serious charges – are and have been pending.  In one, Mr. Rangel is accused of renting four New York apartments at prices considerably below their rent-controlled market value, running afoul of the gift rule on the difference.  In another, he failed to report taxable rental income on property he owns in the Dominican Republic.  There are failures to report numerous asset accounts on financial disclosure forms.  In yet another, the question is whether he improperly provided political favors in return for a million-dollar donation to an already pork-laden center that bears his name.

The ethics committees of Congress are never going to win the Elliot Ness Award.  Even fact-based cases, which seem to require little interpretation, are slow-walked, at the very least.  Thus, when adverse findings are reached, as in the Rangel case, they take on some significance.

The significance of just the first finding against Mr. Rangel cannot be understated.  Within days of the admonishment, The New York Times, the most staid of Mr. Rangel’s hometown newspapers, wrote, “Mr. Rangel, the House’s designated master of fiscal accountability, already deserves to be stripped of his gavel.”

For her part, Nancy Pelosi initially sought to disregard the admonishment and kick the corruption can down the road awaiting further developments.  But few Americans have forgotten Ms. Pelosi’s pledge to “drain the swamp” when campaigning to achieve a Democratic majority in 2006 or her pledge upon becoming Speaker to run “the most ethical and honest Congress in history.”

Reminded of that last week by a reporter, she responded, “And we are.”  For someone who seems to have her own bouts with the truth (for example, regarding CIA briefings she denied receiving), her rather tenuous grip on reality – or totally cynical regard for her responsibility – is yet another symptom of her dysfunctional leadership.

The American people are in no mood for this.  None.  The Rangel mess provides one more tangible reason for the country’s overall disenchantment and disgust with the management of Congress.  Tolerating a tax cheat (when caught, Mr. Rangel paid the back taxes on the rental property, but was assessed no interest or penalties) as head of the tax-writing committee is just not one of those symbols designed to give incumbents of the party in power a nice poll bump.  In fact, the Rangel story only reinforces the fact that President Obama has his very own same-party tax cheat running the Treasury Department.

Rasmussen Reports, which regularly polls the relative importance of issues, finds “ethics and corruption” second only to the economy as a matter of voter concern, a consistent finding that is unlikely to subside, particularly when fed by reports of specific individual dalliances.

The mood regarding Mr. Rangel’s retention of his Chairmanship changed dramatically on March 2, with more and more vulnerable House Democrats calling for him to step down. Facing a Republican-initiated vote to remove him from the Chairmanship, Rangel attempted the temporary “leave-of-absence” gambit.  That may reduce the intensity of the firestorm, but none of the stench, nor should it stop resolution of the pending charges.

Even with Mr. Rangel stepping down, the landscape doesn’t get a lot better for Democrats.  Next in the seniority line to succeed to the Ways and Means Chairmanship is Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California.  But Mr. Stark is highly problematic to the Democrats.  He is volatile, eccentric and an extreme Leftist, subject to controversial, polarizing outburst.  He has had his own brush with ethics in the past year, over taking a homestead exemption for a property that is not his official residence.  Although Mr. Stark was cleared, as with Mr. Rangel, that story, when fully explored, will not sit well with the American people.

Only voters can and will “drain the swamp.”