TopVet: Charles B. Rangel

Charles B. Rangel is serving his seventeenth term as the congressman from northern Manhattan, an area that comprises Harlem, Washington Heights, and the Upper West Side.

He is the ranking member of the Ways & Means Committee, the Deputy Democratic Whip, co-chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and dean of the New York State Congressional Delegation.

Congressman Rangel is the principal author of the $5 billion Federal Empowerment Zone demonstration project to revitalize urban neighborhoods across America. He is the author of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, which is responsible for financing some 90% of the affordable housing built in the United States in the last decade.

The Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which he also championed, has provided thousands of jobs for underprivileged young people, ex-offenders, and veterans, in whose ranks he numbers: the congressman served in the U.S. Army from 1948-52, seeing action in Korea for which he received the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He has authored several pieces of legislation to benefit minority and women veterans, one of which established the Office of Minority Affairs within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Congressman Rangel, who is a founding member and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, is a graduate of New York University and St. John’s Law School. He has spent his entire career in public service, first as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and later as a member of the New York Assembly. He was first elected to Congress in 1970. He and his wife, Alma, make their home in Harlem.