WASHINGTON — It has happened again! Another Obama appointee has
admitted to tax problems. Health and Human Services nominee
Kathleen Sebelius has admitted to irregularities in her tax
returns extending over the past three years. She has made good by
sending off a check for $7,000. Ms. Sebelius claims that problems
were discovered by her accountant as she prepared for her
confirmation hearings and that the debt was the consequence of
“unintentional errors.” Incidentally, when she was committing
these errors she was governor of Kansas.
According to my calculations that makes five Obama nominees who
have reported similar tax irregularities, none of which was
discovered until they began making preparations for their
confirmation hearings. The others who have benefited the U.S.
Treasury by submitting to confirmation hearings were the former
president of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner, and former
Dallas mayor Ron Kirk. Geithner discovered that he owed the
government $34,000 and paid promptly. He is now secretary of the
treasury. Kirk discovered that he owed nearly $10,000 and
presumably also paid promptly for on March 18 he was confirmed as
U.S. trade secretary.
Two other Obama Administration nominees withdrew from
consideration when their tax problems were discovered. They are
Nancy Killefer, who was nominated to be Chief Performance Officer
or White House Performance Czar, before it was discovered that
there had been a $946 lien on her house for her failure to pay
unemployment compensation tax on household help. And, of course,
former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle withdrew his
nomination to head Health and Human Services after it was
discovered that he owed $140,000 in taxes and interest. He had
also become a millionaire while serving as one of Washington’s
hated lobbyists. The Obama Administration is highly critical of
lobbyists and also of millionaires.
All of this suggests that the Internal Revenue Service may have
hit on a novel way to get tax cheats to pay up. Nominate them to
high government service.
Given President Barack Obama’s pledge to reform government, it is
somewhat surprising to read of all these tax cheats among his
nominees. On the other hand, the fact that so many high-level
Democrats fail to pay their taxes might explain why they are such
staunch advocates of raising taxes. They themselves do not pay
them until they face confirmation hearings. Not that tax
irregularities were the only problem faced by an Obama nominee.
There was the former Democratic presidential candidate who
decided to withdraw his nomination for secretary of commerce when
someone told him that his pending grand jury investigation might
not look good during his confirmation hearings. That would be
Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico and once ambassador to
the United Nations during the Clinton Administration. You might
recall that during the Clinton High Jinks Ambassador Richardson
served as headhunter (if that is the right term) for the
curvaceous Monica Lewinsky when the heat was on.
Ethics may yet become an issue with the Obama Administration
which, like the Clinton Administration, came to Washington
promising an administration of unparalleled ethical purity. The
$410 billion omnibus spending bill is a cornucopia for graft. The
$787 billion stimulus bill is yet another cornucopia for graft.
Then there is the problem recently editorialized upon by the
Wall Street Journal.
It appears that the Treasury Department’s plan for toxic-asset
purchases is going to be limited to a handful of four or five
huge companies bidding on the toxic assets and managing them. The
Journal is too polite to bring up the term Crony
Capitalism, but it does speak of the possibility of these few
firms reaping huge profits in a toxic-asset purchase plan that
might be of only limited effect. “We have no idea if Treasury is
playing favorites,” the Journal editorializes, “but it
certainly doesn’t look good. All the more so given that some of
these big players may have consulted informally with the Obama
Administration as it was writing the plan.”
What might be done to vet this plan? Perhaps it could be sent up
to Capitol Hill for a confirmation hearing. We have already seen
their hygienic effect on Obama nominees.
