We consider the problem of transmit power and bit rate allocation for OFDM based cognitive radio systems. An efficient allocation algorithm which mainly consists of two steps is proposed to maximize the sum rate of secondary users. In the first step of the algorithm, original nonlinear problem is converted to a convex problem which is solved by dual methods, and in the second step the final resource allocation results is obtained via iterative power rescale operation. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.