Dem Congressman Doesn’t Pay Rent for a Year, Blames Republicans
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On April 8, 2014 @ 11:09 am In The Point | No Comments
The Party of Crooks and Thieves just can’t stop stealing.
No, we’re not talking about Harry Reid. Though it’s a natural mistake. Reid has only been in Congress since 1983. Rangel has been camping out there since 1971 and he’s been doing D.C. proud.
In July 2008, The Washington Post reported that Rangel was soliciting donations to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York from corporations with business interests before his Ways and Means Committee, and was doing so using Congressional letterhead.
The New York Times reported in July 2008 that Rangel rents four apartments at below-market rates in the Lenox Terrace complex in Harlem. It reported that Rangel paid $3,894 monthly for all four apartments in 2007. In contrast, the landlord’s going rate for similar apartments in the building was as high as $8,125 monthly. Three adjacent apartments were combined to create his 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) home. A fourth unit is used as a campaign office, which violates city and state regulations that require rent-stabilized apartments to be used as a primary residence. Rangel received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from one of the landlords.
A September 2008 New York Post article reported that Rangel had been using a House parking garage as free storage space for his Mercedes-Benz for years, in apparent violation of Congressional rules.
Rangel was accused of failing to report income from his rental of a beachside villa he owns in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. A three-bedroom, three-bath unit, it has rented out for as much as $1,100 per night in the busiest tourist season.
On September 15, 2008, it was disclosed that: a) Rangel had omitted from his financial reports details regarding his sale of a Washington, DC home; b) discrepancies existed in the values he listed for a property he owns in Sunny Isles, Florida (varying from $50,000 to $500,000)
All of that was the fault of the Republican Party. So is this.
State taxpayers were stiffed out of at least $87,000 when Rep. Charles Rangel stopped paying for the district office he rents in Harlem’s Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, records obtained by The Post show.
Incredibly, instead of demanding payment of the back rent and late fees from its deadbeat legislative tenant, the state cut him a huge rent break.
The state says it allowed Rangel in March 2013 to enter into a new sweetheart deal in which he could postpone paying six months of rent. That “abatement” money has still not been paid, nor has the other six months of missed rent from 2013, a OGS official said.
Obviously it was the fault of the GOP.
“As everyone knows, the GOP sequester not only constrained our nation’s economy, but also strained the budget of congressional offices,” said Rangel spokeswoman Hannah Kim.
The sequester, which set caps on lawmakers’ discretionary spending, began in March 2013, two months after records show Rangel stopped paying rent.
But Rangel clearly anticipated the sequester and so preemptively stopped paying rent… because of the Republicans.
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