Another Republican on the panel said yesterday Mr Rangel had been “given the opportunity to negotiate a settlement during the investigation phase”. But that phase is over, and “we are now in the trial phase”. If convicted, Mr Rangel could escape with a report criticising his conduct. Alternatively, he could be reprimanded or censured by the full House of Representatives, or in the worst case expelled.
Whatever happens, he is the latest proof of how the job of chairing the Ways and Means committee, long considered one of the most powerful jobs in Washington, is jinxed – for Democrats at least.
Back in 1974 Wilbur Mills was caught drunk in his car in the small hours by DC police, along with an Argentinian-born stripper called Fanne Foxe. He gave up his committee post a few months later, and in 1976 retired from Congress. Two decades later Dan Rostenkowski, a Chicago-bred wheeler-dealer who negotiated tax policy with Presidents Reagan and George H W Bush, came to grief on a host of petty corruption charges, and spent a year in a federal prison.

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