For an administration enamored with raising taxes, the Obama administration is replete with people who don’t pay theirs. Treasury Secretary Geithner and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle are examples.
First there was the problem that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner created for himself while working at the International Monetary Fund between 2001 and 2004. Geithner was considered self employed at that time and was thus required to pay taxes for his social security and Medicare which he failed to do. An IRS audit that took place in 2006 uncovered Geithner’s nonpayment of self employment taxes for the years 2003 and 2004. Geithner took care of the problem by duly paying the back taxes with interest and penalties.
The rest of the story that raises even more eyebrows during Geithner’s confirmation is the fact that he only paid the back self employment taxes for 2001 and 2002 the very day he was nominated to be Treasury Secretary. Geithner also has a nanny problem of the sort that sunk two of Bill Clinton’s nominees for Attorney General in 1993.
Despite the unedifying spectacle of having a tax cheat in charge of a cabinet department that runs, among other things, the IRS, the Senate confirmed Geithner to be Treasury Secretary by a roughly two to one vote.
Now Health and Human Services nominee former Senator Tom Daschle has his own tax problem. Recently Tom Daschle was forced to pay back taxes with interest on the free car and driver he had been receiving from a Wall Street friend for the past three years.
These kinds of revelations have caused some people to suggest, perhaps a little tongue in cheek, that the stimulus package might be paid for just by forcing high profile Democrats to pay their taxes.
A biggest scandal, though, appears to be the bi-partisan tolerance for these kinds of shenanigans in the United States Senate. Geithner’s tax problems were barely a speed bump on his way to being confirmed. There is no evidence so far that Tom Daschle’s tax problems are going to pose much of an impediment to his confirmation either.
Considering how the IRS reacts when most people are caught not paying their taxes, this situation suggests that, at least under Obama’s regime of “hope and change”, there are different rules for the well connected than there are for the rest of us. Unfortunately this sort of thing tends to erode respect for the law. That could prove a problem for President Obama as he seeks to fulfill his campaign promises to raise taxes “on the rich.”
Source: Uh oh: Obama Treasury nominee had “undocumented” housekeeper, Allahpundit, Hotair.com, January 13th, 2009
Bumps in the Road: Obama’s HHS Secretary Nominee Faces Tax Questions Over Car and Driver, Jake Tapper, ABC News, January 30th, 2009
