The political steam was about to reach boiling point when, after nominating Timothy Geithner,
to become tax chief, President Obama ended up with another high profile tax thief, Tom Daschle to head the department of Health and Human Services. Piling up tax frauds in your cabinet is not exactly the way to clean up Washington and set high ethical standards for government officials, as Mr. Obama has promised the American people.
Though his former Senate cronies, who care little about ethical violations by one of their own, would have voted to confirm him, Tom Daschle, for whatever conscience he has left, chose to withdraw his name. We are led to believe that Mr. Daschle was not pressured by the Obama administration to back off, but under the circumstances, we must take that with a grain of salt.
In his statement, Mr. Daschle said he did not want to become "a distraction. The focus of Congress should be on the urgent business of moving the president's economic agenda forward."
A more ethically-inclined human being would have said, "I'm withdrawing my name to show that cheating on your taxes is a serious matter, and I want to prove that I am not above the law. Again, I ask all honest tax-paying American to forgive me."
Anyway, we'll take whatever we get from Mr. Daschle, as long as it includes his not getting the cabinet post. Hopefully, he's gone for good.
It was not just Tom Daschle who bit the dust on Tuesday, February 3. Madam Nancy Killefer
withdrew her name from becoming Chief Performance Officer, a new position created by President Obama, to screen the federal budget for waste. Madam Killefer also had tax trouble. What greater waste can the government have than losing tax dollars to non-payers like Madam Killefer?
Who would have dreamed that failure to pay taxes would deliver the first black eye to a tax-loving Democrat administration?
For her part, Nancy Killefer, did not pay unemployment taxes on her household employee. Though her amount, $900, paled in comparison to Geithner's $42,000 and Daschle's $140,000, the crime is the same. As they say in religious cycles, "Sin is sin".
In her withdrawal letter, Madam Killefer said she had "come to realize in the current environment that my personal tax issue of D.C. Unemployment tax could be used to create exactly the kind of distraction and delay those duties must avoid."
With the departures of Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer, it seems President Obama may be seeing the light of public ethics more clearly. He's learning that high approval numbers aka political capital does not necessarily empower the president to treat breaches of the nation's tax laws as 'no big deal', making it appear that his tax-cheating nominees are the 'best qualified for the job'.
A humbler Obama told CNN, "Ultimately, I campaigned on changing Washington from the bottom up. I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards: one for powerful people and one for ordinary people paying their taxes."
That's exactly correct.
President Obama also told Fox News, "I consider this a mistake on my part and one I intend to fix and correct and make sure we don't screw it up again."
There, Mr. President, you may be getting our respect back. May be there's still hope for real change in Washington, though it's difficult to see how the people can give you a clean slate with Timothy Geithner, the tax cheat as tax chief. If Mr. Geithner would take real responsibility like Mr. Daschle and Madam Killefer, and withdraw his name, he would recovered some lost political capital for the President.
Anyway, the President promised to avoid nominating 'unclean candidates' while aiming to 'clean up' Washington: "We're going to make sure we fix it so it doesn't happen again."
We shall see.
