Will somebody in the Obama Administration please pay their taxes? (I’m looking at you Daschle and Killefer)
February 3, 2009 at 3:58 pm by Wayne GarciaPresident Barack Obama has now lost two nominees to unpaid taxes (and nearly lost a third in Tim Geithner) as today Tom Daschle, the HHS nominee, and Nancy Killefer, who was to be the first federal Chief Performance Officer, withdrew because of tax problems.
As HuffPo points out, Wall Street apparently has no problem with not paying taxes (Geithner) while the medical establishment was gunning for Daschle because of his views on health-care reform:
Of course Daschle should have been more careful and concurrently paid the more than $100,000 he owed in taxes for the use of a car and driver. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should also have known that he owed the IRS $34,000 in back taxes when he worked for the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2004. The question is why is Geithner, who now oversees the IRS, confirmed as Treasury Secretary and Daschle out as ObamaCare cheiftain?
Wall Street and K-street don’t have a problem with Geithner. Daschle, on the other hand, has worried a lot of drug company, HMO and medical establishment lobbyists with his book, Critical, that calls for a public health care program to compete with the private market. I recently opined on the need for such a Medicare expansion in an LA Times oped. Daschle’s also talked tough about the waste among private health insurers, the profiteering of drug companies and the need for curbing excessive end of life care under Medicare that fails to improve the quaiity of life, but costs taxpayers a fortune. The medical-insurance complex had to be concerned about Daschle’s power.
HuffPo’s Jamie Court says Obama should appoint another nominee who is even more pro-patient, but the piece misses another reason why Daschle was more vulnerable: not paying your taxes is one thing; accepting a free ride and driver from a fatcat supporter for years and THEN not paying taxes on that freebie is another.
