There could not have been a worse time of year for revelations to emerge about unpaid taxes by Tom Daschle and other prospective members of Barack Obama’s administration.
“Tom Daschle, like Leona Helmsley, believes that only ‘the little people’ should pay taxes,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, quoting a notorious New York real-estate investor. “He thinks he’s too important for that, and he gives the word hypocrisy a bad odor.”
Tom Daschle apologized and said he was “deeply sorry.” Though Mr. Daschle didn’t admit it, he was probably sorry that his tax cheating cost him a prize appointment.
The hypocrisy of former Senator Daschle can be found in his own words from a 1998 debate, “Tax cheaters cheat us all, and the [Internal Revenue Service] should enforce our laws to the letter.”
Tom Daschle with his $140,000 (including interest) tax problem and the $34,000 tax problem of Tim Geithner have done much to tarnish the so called ethics drive of the Obama administration.
Making matters worse is the fact that Geithner has already been confirmed as secretary of treasury! In other words, the man in charge of the Internal Revenue Service is an admitted tax cheat.
Just hours after Daschle withdrew under pressure, Nancy Killefer announced that she too had been late in paying nearly $1,000 of taxes and would no longer be taking up her position as government chief performance officer - a new role responsible for increasing government accountability.
As a former chief operating officer of the Treasury department, Ms Killefer was once heavily involved in management of the IRS and subsequently sat on an oversight board that pushed the agency to crack down on high-income tax cheats.
That makes three Obama appointees with tax issues. So much for the Obama ethics drive.
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