Charles Rangel: The Lion of Harlem

Charles Rangel was pacing outside a congressional meeting room where members of the House of Representatives were haggling over the health-care bill. Inside, a boiler-room atmosphere had developed: no one was allowed to leave for anything other than a bathroom break or a vote until committee members came up with a way to pay for the health-care legislation that was being hammered out in Congress. Maintaining his usual sartorial discipline, Rangel was wearing a pearl gray suit with a checkered tie and gold tiepin; a crest of gray hair was slicked neatly over the top of his head, and a chunky opal ring twinkled on his right hand. But his eyes were beginning to resemble those of a bloodhound exhausted by the hunt. "We have to raise $1.2 trillion," he said. "It's like pulling teeth. I haven't even talked to my wife in two days." (See the top 10 key players in health-care reform.)

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• 10 Questions for Charles Rangel

Ways and Means is one of Congress's most powerful clubs, the guardian of the federal tax code and the body responsible for finding a way to pay for anything Congress wants to do. The Obama Administration had counted on Rangel's committee to be a key linchpin in its push for health-care reform — which would also rank as Rangel's crowning legislative achievement. It hasn't worked out that way, at least not yet. Deeply split along party lines, the Ways and Means panel has become a target for critics who say Obama has allowed congressional Democrats to turn health-care reform into a partisan enterprise that will raise taxes on the rich without controlling costs or solving many of the health-care system's biggest problems. And it is the committee's chairman, the 20-term Congressman from Harlem, N.Y., who is taking the most heat. (Watch TIME's video "Inauguration Celebration in Harlem.")

The first thing one notices about Rangel is his appearance: every hair carefully in place with the aid of a purple comb he keeps in his pocket. The second is the way he speaks: his voice is deep and raspy, and he expresses himself with a bluntness that suggests he's been around too long to care what people think. At 79, Rangel is one of Capitol Hill's oldest lions, with an impressive backstory that lends him stature with his colleagues. "As a leader in Congress, he's a respected voice," says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Rangel has been in the House of Representatives since 1971 and on the committee since 1974. When he rose to chairman in 2007, Rangel became the first African American ever to hold the position. "To be the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is probably as close to being a major figure in a European monarchy as we have to offer," says Ross Baker, a political-science professor at Rutgers University. "The chairman is subject to the largest numbers of entreaties and colossal deference because everybody has got a tax angle. It means you are paid court by every lobbyist in Washington." (Read TIME's 1970 article about Rangel, "New Man from Harlem.")

It also means you have to watch your step. The job has been too much for men like Arkansas's Wilbur Mills and Illinois's Dan Rostenkowski, who in decades past let ethical errors derail their chairmanships. Lately, Rangel has been seen to have stumbled as well. He has become the focus of several ethics scandals over matters ranging from the relatively petty to the potentially serious. Last summer, it was revealed that Rangel was occupying four apartments at below-market rents in a Harlem building owned by a prominent real estate developer. (He has since given up one apartment that he used as an office.) In September, he admitted he had neglected to pay some taxes by failing to report $75,000 in rental income earned from a beachfront villa he owns in the Dominican Republic. ("That was a big boo-boo," he acknowledged.) His fundraising for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York has been controversial, with accusations that Rangel improperly used congressional stationery to solicit donations and sought contributions from companies that had business before the Ways and Means Committee. ("Me writing a letter on behalf of a goddam college? Give me a break," he says dismissively.) In June, the House ethics committee launched yet another probe, this time into trips taken by Rangel and other lawmakers to the Caribbean. ("That's nothing," he says.)

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