Wrangler

As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) carries a big tax stick but he talks quietly, too.

He acknowledges that if he followed his heart, he’d raise taxes on upper-income earners and on dividends and capital gains. But he insists that he’s not yet fully committed to those policies in his work writing federal tax law.

He voted for the Congressional Black Caucus’s budget resolution earlier this year, which seeks to repeal parts of President Bush’s tax cuts, but in an exclusive interview with The Hill, Rangel explained this away, saying: “From time to time, my roots come up and I’ll let you know where my heart is, but I cannot tell you where my votes will be.”

In other words, he felt free to vote for the CBC budget because it was a gesture that revealed his preferences, not necessarily because it could become law.

Rangel knows that with Democratic leadership determined to avoid being tagged as tax-and-spend liberals, fiscal policy will be decided not by him alone. And he is not planning to use his long-desired chairmanship of the premier House committee as a bulldozer with which to shove his party back into the minority.

Yet he is drafting what he calls “the mother of all tax reforms” to eliminate the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and cut taxes for the poor, and yet comply with pay-go rules that oblige him to find new revenues to offset the tax cuts.

This Rangel bill is unlikely to get far and it is much more likely that the AMT will be given a temporary fix to prevent an estimated 23 million people from falling into its maw next year — 23 million who would not thank Democratic candidates on Election Day for such an event.

And speaking of campaign politics, Rangel suggested a different sort of electoral package. He has endorsed the candidacy of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), so we know, presumably, which way he will vote. But here, as with taxes, he is also showing something of his heartfelt preference, too. He told The Hill that he would like to see Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on the ticket with Clinton.

Who knows — he might get his wish on that as well as on taxes.