The curse of Ways and Means Committee chairmen hangs over the House this week.
As with Charles Rangel, the careers of his longtime Democratic predecessors ended with sad and ignominious ousters that weakened the once-powerful committee and ultimately the Democratic majority.
The sins of Dan Rostenkowski and Wilbur Mills, as well as those of Rangel, had little to do with the work of the tax-writing panel, as Ways and Means defenders point out. But in each case, Democratic barons were taken down by sins of venality and the perception of personal entitlement.
Given the potential for gross corruption by chairmen who help write the U.S. tax code, each of these three Democrats paid the price for relatively penny-ante misdeeds, though the violations were enough to send Rostenkowski to the slammer for more than a year. Perhaps the unifying thread in each case is that the chairmen appeared to lose the common touch from their c...
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