Ethics case is indictment of Loebsack, too: Miller-Meeks

OTTUMWA – Republican U.S. House candidate Mariannette Miller-Meeks said the July 22 House Ethics Committee decision to investigate accusations against Rep. Charlie Rangel is an indictment of 2

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District Democrat Rep. David Loebsack who voted two years ago to block an investigation.

The House Ethics Committee voted to send the accusations of avoiding taxes and other ethical lapses to the full House.

“It's said that justice delayed is justice denied,” Miller-Meeks said. “Loebsack did his best to deny justice in September 2008 when he voted to block the investigation into Rep. Charles Rangel's alleged wrongdoing. It took a long time – too long, but the House Ethics Committee's decision on Thursday is also an indictment that David Loebsack was too eager to fall right in with politics-as-usual crowd.”

“I have not passed any judgment on Rangel,” Loebsack said the 2008 vote. He divided his $5,000 contribution from Rangel between the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids chambers of commerce and statewide flood relief efforts. Loebsack said he was a victim of “guilt by association.”

Rangel, a New York Democrat who is fourth in House seniority, is accused of using a rent-subsidized apartment as a fundraising office, failing to pay taxes on at least $75,000 of rental income from a Caribbean villa he owns and using his House stationery to solicit contributions to a City University of New York school to be named in his honor.

When elected in 2006, Loebsack told voters he was going to reform Washington. He hadn't even completed his first term when he accepted a $5,000 contribution from Rangel and voted to block the ethics probe into Rangel's activities, Miller-Meeks said.

“Taxpayers shouldn't have had to wait two years for the House Ethics Committee to act,” Miller-Meeks said. “They wouldn't have had to wait that long if David Loebsack hadn't been standing in the way because he is so out of touch with his constituents' values.”