"The Republicans' proposed budget cuts for the fiscal years 2011 and 2012 are the most radical I've ever seen," said Jerrold Nadler, who was joined by Anthony Weiner, Charlie Rangel, Carolyn Maloney and Eliot engel. "That extremist Republican agenda is precisely what brought us to the brink, to the edge, of a government shutdown."

Obama and congressional leaders agreed to the stopgap budget deal late Friday, dodging a government shutdown by agreeing to $38 billion in cuts from a variety of federal programs. Liberal Democrats have argued that the bill is socially irresponsible and that it would kill jobs.

The deal was preceded by a long-term deficit-reduction proposal from Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, which would make deep cuts to entitlement spending.

"My Republican colleagues would like to repeal the twentieth century," said Engel. "They want to repeal Medicare and Medicaid, they want to repeal Social Security. And they are using the budget crisis as a ruse."

Democratic lawmakers have also criticized Obama, saying that he is caving to conservatives who are aiming to use the budget to push a social agenda. Nadler has said that Democrats have been blackmailed into the deal, accusing Obama of "whistling past the graveyard" in proclaiming a budget victory. Weiner expressed a similar sentiment via his Twitter. The representatives exempted Obama from criticism today, however, instead calling on congressional Democrats to fight the proposed measures.

"I recognize that the president has a $14 trillion deficit," said Rangel, who also said that Obama is dealing with with a Republican party that refuses to compromise. "The president has three undeclared wars. The president has an income tax system where the richest of the rich pay absolutely nothing."

"I think he was a fine leader--he brought parties together to negotiate, that's what government's about," said Maloney. "Not everyone got what they wanted but we did avert a government shutdown."

This may have been slightly premature, as much of the deal remains undefined. Maryland congressman Chris Van Hollen said yesterday on ABC News' This Week that lawmakers were still negotiating the fine details of the cut, and Senator Charles Schumer was unwilling to identify the specific cuts when pressed. All of which has left some Democrats--including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand--wittholding judgment on the deal.

Rangel suggested the budget fight could be a defining moment for Democrats.

"This is an opportunity for America really to prove who we are, and what we represent," said Rangel, who helpfully suggested that lawmakers turn to spiritual leaders for guidance. "The $38 billion is nothing compared to the nightmare that the Republicans are preparing in the House of Representatives."

Lawmakers will vote on the measure this Thursday. If they do not reach an agreement, the government faces another potential shutdown.

Maloney had summoned the press to the City Hall steps to discuss Republican efforts to terminate federal foreclosure-avoidance programs, but one special guest, Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel, took the occasion to continue his criticism of the president's executive decision to intervene in Libya.

Rangel has been one of the most outspoken critics of the president's decision, including an editorial in the Daily News this morning, and he couldn't help himself during the question-and-answer session.

"You sound like you want to say something about Libya," one reporter pressed. "Are you concerned that there needs to be more advice and consent?"

"There doesn't need to be more, there has to be some," Rangel said. "And it would be interesting even at the end of the press conference if we find out how much is the war costing us? I think it's a million dollars a rocket, I think we're on the way to 500 million, and we're still going...I don't want to talk about Libya."

"But you raised it four or five times," the reporter noted. "I figured you wanted to go there."

"Well, I don't want to take away from this press conference," Rangel said, "but anybody who's glanced at the Constitution will tell you that, president after president ever since Roosevelt, have [sic] ignored the constitutional mandate to check with the American people before they put our kids in harm's way. And Congress has just completely been ignored about this. If indeed our role is one of humaneness, we have to see whether we can develop a policy to see whether Sudan and other areas should be treated the same way. But we're here because we're broke, or at least they say we're broke--"

The reporter noted that it was the congressman who had made the connection.

"Well, how can you not?" Rangel said. "It's costing us two billion a week in Afghanistan, that money is coming from somewhere, and all of a sudden we're slashing this program for people, laying off teachers, fireman, the whole works. And this is not for free."

Finally, Maloney--who had been visibly amused by the exchange--was asked for her opinion.

"I agree completely," she said, but added, "I am pleased with the president's statement that in a couple of days they're going to be turning over the leadership to the Arab League, NATO, and others, and hopefully that means we can bring our men and our dollars back to the housing programs and the needs of the American people."

Rangel jumped in, "Now, who are they going to turn their leadership over to in Libya?"

It's therefore impossible to overstate the news that ''America's first black president" is leaving the neighborhood. But brokers for the William J. Clinton Foundation confirmed to The Observer that the foundation is giving up most of its offices at 55 West 125th Street.

Reports circulated last year that Mr. Clinton had renewed his Harlem lease for 10 years at a lower rate, but in fact, the federal government's General Services Adminstration had merely extended its hold on a small 8,000-square-foot space at the top of the 14-story building. Now we learn that the foundation will, in fact, move most of its offices to a 25,000-square-foot space on the 18th floor of 77 Water Street for 10 years, as also reported by the Post this morning.

There's been much griping about the ex-president's lavish taste in office space (though certainly not by us). The move, according to CB Richard Ellis' Roshan Shah, who represented the tenant along with Keith Caggiano, was about the nonprofit's desire to control costs. "That was probably the biggest factor," Mr. Shah said.

Asking rents for both the Harlem and Goldman Sachs' FiDi spaces were both $40 a square foot, but the tenant was able to negotiate a lower rent downtown. Mr. Shah declined to say how much the foundation will pay because the deal is expected to close in three weeks. He did note that the sublandlord, Goldman Sachs, is going to build out the space.

The move will also allow the foundation to expand from 18,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet, while occupying a single floor instead of potentially being spread out over five. "With every crisis that occurs in the world, when something happens in Haiti," for example, they need more staff, Mr. Shah noted. "They've grown tremendously in terms of size."

Mr. Clinton will maintain a small office in the 8,000-square-foot space. But, after all, he can spread some of that love around. "He's had a very active role with Obama in some of the economic reform," Mr. Shah said, "and it sends a positive message that he's going downtown."

lkusisto@observer.com

Additional reporting by Matt Chaban.

Peter King Hearings: Round two, on "prison radicalization." [Ben Smith]

Schumer's Job: "Mr. Schumer must weigh the hopes and dreams of his most liberal members, who crave open ideological battle with Republicans, while watching the backs of moderates, who are pushing for their own deficit-reduction narrative." [Steinhauer and Hernandez]

Gun Control: Not discussed when Bloomberg met Boehner.

John Haggerty: Judge says the case is not a victimless crime. [NY Post]

John Haggerty: Gag order. [Michael Howard Saul]

Cuomo's Budget: Won't blink, knowing it'll define his tenure. [Fred Dicker]

Dicker and Chartock: David King once answered phones in Chartock's office, but seems to have a healthy obsession with him now. [Gotham Gazette]

School Budgets: GOP restores $280 million. [Fertig and Reynolds]

School Budgets: State comptroller notes their troubles, in a video. [Tom DiNapoli]

Redistricting: Democratic leader sounded like a Republican, last year. [Liz Benjamin]

Disabled: Assemblyman Ortiz wants anyone spotlighted in the NYT's story of abuse, fired. [City Room]

Disabled Protesters: "We hear what they are saying. We're not deaf," said Assemblyman Ortiz. [YouTube]

Protesting Cuomo: One guy wore a Chris Christie mask. [Nick Reisman]

Taxes: Skelos won't support a millionaires tax, even if coupled with property tax cap. [Nick Reisman]

Corruption: A Kruger bill could have helped an alleged Kruger conspirator. [Celeste Katz]

Islamic Center: Still trying to stop it in the courts. [Fox]

Tea Party: "To spend taxpayer money on LIHEAP while the President enforces a ridiculous moratorium on drilling in the Gulf is unconscionable." [Frank Santarpia]

Protesters: About a dozen of them shut down the Assembly. [Jimmy Vielkind]

Albany Ethics: "We can only hope that the Legislature, hounded by the FBI, will try to turn the heat down by agreeing to a really strong ethics bill. I bet they don’t." [Alan Chartock]

Pictures: Ray Kelly, almost always cool. [City Room]

Talking Back: To comment, you now have to register with nytimes.com. [City Room]

Here's how Rangel described Bloomberg's advocacy: "Absolutely, our nation's leader on this effort."

As for budget issues, Rangel said the mayor was slightly less outspoken.

"He hasn't spoken out against raising revenues," Rangel said of the mayor. He then switched focus, saying his Republican colleagues "have, as part of their mandate, pledged not to tax anything, not even to close tax loopholes."

"You don't have to talk about raising taxes," he said, "You can talk about tax reform."

"This is an intention I have at this time," he said. "You recognize that even though I get over 80% of the voters vote, that was a couple of months ago. I don't know what the voters will think or what the economy will dictate we have to do. Unfortunately when you have a two-year contract you have to send a signal to the Federal Election Commission, which I did, but nothing is locked in stone. I have to talk to my voters and my community leaders and all of those things."

Many up in Harlem thought that there was even a possibility that Rangel would not finish this term, considering the embarrasment of the censure vote and the fact that Rangel had to give up the gavel of the House Ways and Means committee.

The Harlem congressman also talked about the federal budget and he was asked about his relationship to President Obama.  Obama appeared to nudge Rangel out the door last year when he was being engulfed by scandal.

Rangel disagreed with that assessment. "I don't see how the President could have been of any help to me. I didn't ask for it. I sure didn't get it."

He also added that Obama was "most compassionate" president he has known.

Rep. Charlie Rangel: MyFoxNY.com

The evening had the feeling of a raucous revival, with the capacity audience urging on union officials and city councilmen with calls of "that's right!" "tell it!" and beginning call-and-response chants of "Pass the bill -- right now!" Beneath a huge blue banner reading LIVING WAGE NOW!, senior pastor Jesse T. Williams began the night with a call to action.

"The minimum wage is a poverty wage and it is inadequate to live off of for an individual, let alone a family, in New York," Williams thundered. He intertwined references to Dr. King with pointed messages to elected official and urged city council speaker Christine Quinn to hold a long-delayed hearing on a living wage bill.

The living wage is currently set at ten dollars an hour with health benefits or $11.50 without, compared to the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The Fair Wage for New Yorkers Act would mandate this wage for employees of city-subsidized developments, including workers at businesses developed on land owned by the city. It would also lift a ceiling on the wage, which was capped at ten dollars an hour in a 2002 bill, so it can rise in proportion to inflation. Recent amendments offer exemptions for developments making less than a million dollars a year and nonprofits.

The issue became prominent in the spring of 2009, when an attempt to transform the vacant Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx into a shopping mall fell apart after the developers -- who were looking at about $17 million in tax breaks from the city -- rejected an agreement requiring a living wage for employees of the businesses that would occupy the building, leading the city council to resoundingly vote down the development, 45-1.

The defeat was a rebuke for Bloomberg and energized proponents of the living wage. It appears to still be a rallying point, something Bronx president Ruben Diaz, Jr., took advantage of in his time at the pulpit.

"We said listen, if you want charity, you have to be charitable," he said. "If you want a public benefit, then your project has to benefit the public."

Rep. Charlie Rangel, a fixture in Harlem, also made a surprise appearance. He drew parallels to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, recalling that when he undertook the 54-mile walk from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, he did not realize what was at stake.

"I had no idea that march was making history, but I want each and every one of you here tonight to take a deep breath and realize you are making history," he said.

City councilman Oliver Koppell, who joined Annabel Palma in introducing the bill, told the audience the legislation had garnered a 29-vote majority and said he was urging Quinn to hold a hearing. In an interview after the rally, he said she seems to be warming to the bill, and noted supporting it would give her an opportunity to tamp down criticism of her decision to postpone a vote on paid sick leave. But the more urgent battle, Koppell said, is to win Bloomberg's support.

"The biggest problem is the approval of the mayor, but we can't let the mayor control this," Koppell said. "I'm not totally pessimistic about the chances of getting the mayor to support this."

The mayor's specially appointed policy analysts may be less optimistic about the bill's repercussions. A yet-to-be-published study commissioned by the city's Economic Development Council has already led a chorus of critics to charge that the authors' past research shows a pattern of bias against wage standards. Conversely, a recent report by the Center for American Progress examined 15 U.S. cities that have a living wage in place -- including Los Angeles and Philadelphia -- and concluded that they did not sacrifice jobs.

City comptroller John Liu and council member Inez Dickens also spoke. City council members Melissa Mark-Viveritos, Letitia James and Gale Brewer attended.

But the night that Charlie Rangel won his 20th term in Congress, early and often he waltzed out on to the stage, grabbed the microphone, declared victory before saying it wasn't over yet, thanked friends and supporters and introduced each new political guest as he arrived.

By night's end, Mr. Rangel had inched slightly above the 50 percent mark in a six-candidate field, scoring just enough of a validation from the Harlem community he has served for the past three decades to tell the executioners in Washington to hold their fire.

The next day, Mr. Rangel went back to work in D.C., but he returned to the district on Monday night, appearing before a few dozen graybeards for a meeting of Manhattan Peace Action in a basement community center on the Upper West Side.

Sporting a pinstriped suit and an electric blue tie and pocket square, he was there to talk about his plan to reinstitute the military draft, a provocative proposal designed to highlight what he sees as a de-facto conscription of young men and women who see no opportunity in neighborhoods like his own.

But Mr. Rangel, who led 40 men to safety after getting shot in the Korean War and earned a Purple Star for his efforts, soon pivoted to politics.

"Now in combat, just like in races, God has given us a sense of adrenaline, that which gets you all hopped up either attacking or defending," he said. "But somehow it works. You can get people worked up that they got to shoot people or get shot."

When Mr. Rangel started to look like he was weak, after nearly two years of relentless bad news about sloppy financial disclosure forms, improper fund-raising and failure to pay taxes, Harlemites started to come out of the woodwork to take him on. Vince Morgan, a community banker and former Rangel aide, began arguing that it was time for the neighborhood to look beyond the Rangel era. Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, whose revered father served the district before being ousted by Mr. Rangel, called Mr. Rangel an embarrassment. Perennial candidate Jonathan Tasini accused Mr. Rangel of everything from being responsible for the gentrification of Harlem to prolonging the war in Afghanistan.

Few in the political class, however, abandoned him. Former mayor David Dinkins famously flipped off a gaggle of protestors at a Rangel fund-raiser. Bill Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg robo-called constituents for him. Every local elected official attended his high-dollar 80th birthday party at the Plaza, or sent checks in their stead.

And Mr. Rangel, whose 40-year tenure in Congress has seemed like one endless campaign swing through Harlem, visiting every block party and housing-project barbecue he could, cranked the glad-handing up another notch over the past few weeks, hitting early-morning subway stops, shaking hands at senior centers and rallying for the unemployed on Wall Street.

"Let me thank you for the last election," he said to Manhattan Peace Action. "It meant more to me than politics. It meant the faith that you have in me representing you, and I promise I will never do anything to embarrass you."

After Mr. Rangel was finished, the meeting cleared out as the peaceniks rushed to greet him in the hallway.

"A tremendous load has been lifted off of my shoulders," he said once he had waded through them. "If you feel more bounce in my step, that's because it was a very heavy emotional toll. Not so much the accusations but what are my friends and constituents really thinking. It's a painful thing when people say you let them down."

Mr. Rangel is not in the clear yet. His House Ethics trial has yet to begin. It is unlikely that he will get the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee back, assuming that Democrats retain the majority in Congress. Republicans are likely to run ads all over the country for the next several weeks pointing to Mr. Rangel as a reason why they should not.

But his just over 50 percent victory shows that he is still the kingmaker in Harlem. And even as a batch of Harlem elected officials line up to replace Mr. Rangel, his victory says that they perhaps should put away the drape-measures for the time being. He has, after all, given no indication that 2010 will be his last race.

"Now I know that at the very minimum, people are saying, 'I believe what you said, I give you a chance,'" Mr. Rangel said before stepping into his Town Car and heading home. "And so if I seem more fired up, it's because I am." --David Freedlander

"I am going to start earlier, and do a better job organizing and raising money," she said.

Johnson acknowledged that her campaign did not gain its footing until she was endorsed by The New York Times, which feared in its endorsement that Rangel would pull "a common New York party trick by resigning early so Democrats could handpick his replacement for a quick, unnoticed special election" and called his closest opponent, Adam Clayton Powell IV, someone "who has done little in Albany, even by Albany's do-little standards." 

Johnson was lumped in instead with also-rans Jonathan Tasini, Ruben Vargas and Vince Morgan, but was deemed the class of that group because she "has been a strong advocate for women's rights and civil rights for many years." 

Johnson ended up finishing third, behind Powell and Rangel, with 12 percent of the vote.

Johnson said that the reason she was not able to get any traction was because, "the press was obsessed with the Powell-Rangel rematch. I called it Ali-Frazier."

Johnson also said that she expected the "common New York party trick" that The Times mentioned would actually occur, and that Rangel would resign early and pick a successor. She said she was preparing to run against Assemblyman Keith Wright or council member Inez Dickens.

"I am a party insider, too," she said. 

Johnson has previously served as a district leader.

Johnson however seems to hold no ill feeling towards the foe that vanquished her last week. Last night she waited outside a community center where Rangel was slated to appear to congratulate him for the first time following his victory

"I knew you were on your way here," she said as she reached to embrace the dean of the Congressional delegation. "I didn't want to do it over the phone."

dfreedlander@observer.com

"This is Mayor Mike Bloomberg urging you to vote for Congressman Charlie Rangel," the call begins. The message's content was largely covered by the Daily News, with the mayor talking up Rangel's bringing stimulus money to the city and work to "ensure affordable housing for working families," but we're not in Rangel's district and were curious what it sounded like.

Rangel seems to be taking no chances in his primary race against Adam Clayton Powell. The Times spotted him pressing the flesh on the Upper West Side Tuesday and Maggie Haberman reported this afternoon that Bill Clinton will also record a robo-call for the Congressman.