Tax issues emerge in Daschle nomination
Former Sen. Tom Daschle, picked by President Barack Obama to lead the administration's health reform efforts, recently filed amended tax returns to report $128,203 in unpaid taxes and $11,964 in interest, according to a Senate document obtained by The Associated Press.
The White House acknowledged Friday that "some tax issues" had emerged in connection with the nomination, but a spokesman said the president is confident the former Senate Democratic leader will be confirmed as the new health secretary.
Daschle filed amended tax returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 to reflect additional income for consulting work, the use of a car service and reductions in charitable contribution deductions. He filed the returns after the announcement that Obama intended to nominate him to head the Health and Human Services Department.
Pay attention to the fact that Daschle admitted to cheating on his taxes in only three most recent years. If you believe that he was not fudging the numbers prior to 2005 you are seriously naive.
As John Hinderaker points out in Powerline,
As a life-long politician, Tom Daschle never earned much money. But he retired from the Senate, after being defeated for re-election by John Thune, as a multimillionaire.
How did he do that?
His wife Linda is or was a lobbyist, and she was the one who reported the family's income. (This is inference, since Daschle consistently chose not to make his tax returns public.) Linda Daschle made millions "lobbying" on behalf of various corporate interests. There was no conflict of interest, the Democrats assured us, because Linda Daschle only "lobbied" the House of Representatives, not the Senate, where her husband was either the Majority or the Minority Leader for much of his career.
But wait! If a company hired Linda to lobby House members, the check they wrote went straight into the Senate Majority Leader's joint checking account. It would have been a felony to write the check to Tom in exchange for political services, but a check to Linda, that went into the same bank account? No problem! She wasn't lobbying the Senate! So Tom Daschle became a multimillionaire.
John asks the question:
Is Tom Daschle a crook, or is it fairer to think of him as a low-level tool of various big-time crooks who play the Washington game by the corrupt rules of the Democratic Party?
Well, people go to jail for failing to pay their taxes, so yes, Tom Daschle is a crook – but instead of going to jail he is joining the other tax crooks in the Obama administration.
Still, there is always a silver lining. One good thing about electing a Democrat as President is that, as he nominates fellow Democrats to senior positions in the Executive Branch, millions of dollars in unpaid tax liabilities come to light and are belatedly paid to the IRS, with interest. It is, perhaps, the most tangible advantage of electing Democrats to office.Elect enough Democrats and pay off the national debt?
The NY Times excuses Daschle this way:
The committee report said, “Senator Daschle filed the amended returns voluntarily after Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate the senator to be the secretary of health and human services.”
Is it necessary to point out that Daschle owed the taxes whether or not he was going to be appointed to the Obama cabinet? The NY Times parrots the Democrat controlled committee report in obscuring the fact that Daschle confessed to being a tax cheat after finding out that Obama was going to appoint him.
1 comment:
I'm with Hinderaker. I think that Obama should just keep appointing Democrats to high government positions until the budget is balanced.
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