The Definition of Chutzpah: Obama Administration Tax Cheats Cracking Down on Tax Evasion!

The Obama Administration’s new campaign against “tax cheats” is particularly rich given that the ostensible head of the Internal Revenue Service – Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner – is himself a dyed in the wool, proven tax cheat himself! Geithner only ended up paying tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes – on foreign income he didn’t bother reporting – only when he was nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury.

Like most Democrats, Geithner believes only OTHER PEOPLE should pay the sky-high taxes that he wants to impose on the country.

Nor is he the only proven tax cheat in the Obama Administration or among the tax-happy Democrats in Congress.

“Hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes are owed to the government each year but are not being collected,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat from New York’s Harlem district and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, himself investigated for criminal tax evasion. “It’s like somebody saying, you’re in the will, but you’re not going to get the money anyway. We’re still going to go after it.”

President Barack Obama’s nominee to be U.S. Trade Representative was forced to agree to pay nearly $10,000 in back taxes after a Senate panel vetting his nomination questioned him about his filings.

It does not appear that the revelation will damage Kirk’s nomination, which is scheduled to be the subject of a Monday hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.

Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) issued a statement expressing support for Kirk, calling him “the right person for this job and I will work to move his nomination quickly.”

A former Dallas mayor who has been working as a lawyer and lobbyist, Kirk is the fourth administration appointee to be called out for tax problems.

In a report, the Senate Finance Committee noted that Kirk failed to report $37,750 in honoraria as income from 2004 through 2007, because he donated the speaking fees directly to Austin College in Sherman, Texas, his alma mater, to create a scholarship fund.

And, that makes three. It’s unclear how serious “Chief Performance Officer” Nancy Killefer’s problems with the IRS are. She may have been pushed to withdraw given the aggregate public relations hit the Obama administration is taking due the revelation that NO DEMOCRATS PAY THEIR TAXES.

When Obama announced the newly created post— part of OMB— to much ado, the administration envisioned her job as one that would “help put us on a path to fiscal discipline” by making government more efficient.

“We can no longer afford to sustain the old ways when we know there are new and more efficient ways of getting the job done,” Obama told a news conference just hours after new official projections put the fiscal 2009 U.S. budget deficit at a record $1.186 trillion.
Well, government would certainly have to be more efficient if we all paid our taxes like Democrats do.
Chuck Todd posits that Killefer is withdrawing her nomination because her close work with the IRS as a Clinton administration assistant Treasury secretary, dictates a zero-tolerance policy on taxes. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t the guy who is supposed to run the Treasury Department be subject to the same rule?

Add Al Franken and Charlie Rangel to the count, and you’ve got a veritable all-star team of tax cheats. These people are the Ted Haggards of taxes, and they should be pilloried in much the same way. They preach about “shared sacrifice” and the patriotism of paying taxes, and yet they conveniently forget about to pay taxes on their chauffeur services, international properties, and entire jobs when calculating their own sacrifices.

I doubt Killefer will be the last one to pay for her tax sins. Even the NYT is not defending Tom Daschle:
In both the Geithner and Daschle cases, the failure to pay taxes is attributed to unintentional oversights. But Mr. Daschle is one oversight case too many. The American tax system depends heavily on voluntary compliance. It would send a terrible message to the public if we ignore the failure of yet another high-level nominee to comply with the tax laws…

Mr. Daschle is another in a long line of politicians who move cozily between government and industry. We don’t know that his industry ties would influence his judgments on health issues, but they could potentially throw a cloud over health care reform. Mr. Daschle could clear the atmosphere by withdrawing his name.

Nor should they be defending him. The NYT, Daschle, and the entire Obama administration is proposing to bring the American people a trillion in economic “stimulus,” much of which is made up of spending on their pet projects. Those pet projects will be funded by those Americans who do pay their taxes, and may very well be paying more in taxes under an Obama administration.