By Molly K. Hooper, CQ Staff

Insisting he has done nothing wrong despite a growing list of questions about his financial dealings, embattled House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel said Monday he welcomes a thorough ethics committee investigation of all the allegations against him.

“Everything that’s been said they should look at ... bar nothing,” the veteran New York Democrat said.

Rangel already is the subject of an ethics panel investigation into his four rent-controlled apartments in his New York City district, his failure to pay taxes on all the income he received from a property he owns in the Dominican Republic, and his use of his office letterhead to solicit donations for a public policy school at City University of New York that would bear his name.

The New York Times added another set of questions to the mix last month, reporting Nov. 24 that Rangel “was instrumental in preserving a lucrative tax loophole that benefited an oil-drilling company last year, while at the same time its chief executive was pledging $1 million” to the City University project.

Rangel has insisted there was no tit for tat involved, and said he had consistently opposed retroactive alteration of the tax code.

House Republicans have kept up a steady drumbeat of demands for Rangel to step aside from his powerful chairmanship while the ethics investigation is under way.

The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the panel is formally known, doesn’t comment publicly on its investigations, other than to announce that in early October it initiated a probe of Rangel.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far resisted calls for Rangel to step aside from his chairmanship of the tax-writing committee while the lengthening list of allegations is investigated. In early December she said, “I don’t foresee” Rangel losing his chairmanship. She also said the committee will try to finish its investigation before the new Congress convenes Jan. 6.