Following up on Jason's post today, I am a bit bewildered with the Obama administration's choice of, not one, but two tax evaders as cabinet members. Bad enough is that the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, allegedly didn't pay taxes. The I.R.S. is a department within the Department of the Treasury. How can you appoint someone to oversee the Treasury and the I.R.S. who didn't pay taxes? In Geithner's defense, the amount of unpaid taxes was only about $17,000, so maybe this was an oversight.
However, adding an exclamation point to the Geithner appointment is now the Daschle appointment to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
However, adding an exclamation point to the Geithner appointment is now the Daschle appointment to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
Daschle is reported
to have over $120,000 in unpaid taxes. This is no longer pocket change
or a possible oversight. This is Blagojevichian (I hope that becomes a
common term). Obama's response to whether he would still support his
nomination of Daschle was, "absolutely." My question to the Obama
administration is the following.
What are you trying to tell us? Do we still need to pay our taxes? I wasn't sure after the Geithner nomination. But sticking by the Daschle nomination really drove it home. That is really going to hurt the U.S. government income statement at a time when spending is going up at record levels. We could use the tax revenue that presidential appointees are not paying.
UPDATE (Feb. 3, 2009): Tom Daschle withdrew his name today for nomination as Secretary of the Department of HHS. I guess it might still be important that we pay our taxes.
What are you trying to tell us? Do we still need to pay our taxes? I wasn't sure after the Geithner nomination. But sticking by the Daschle nomination really drove it home. That is really going to hurt the U.S. government income statement at a time when spending is going up at record levels. We could use the tax revenue that presidential appointees are not paying.
UPDATE (Feb. 3, 2009): Tom Daschle withdrew his name today for nomination as Secretary of the Department of HHS. I guess it might still be important that we pay our taxes.
And one more time; http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/citing-tax-troubles-an-obama-appointee-withdraws/?hp
Thanks for the link, Jason. However, I'll bet Nancy Killefer avoided a smaller amount of taxes than Tom Daschle.
Tax evasion is to Democrats what gay scandals are to Republicans. It is a problem that seems to come in condensed waves.
this does not help me at all!