Taxing Arrogance

Barack Obama’s supporters voted for change. I just don’t think the change they got was the change they had in mind.

In another area of stark contrast with the predecessor administration, we are now witnessing one of the sloppiest cabinet filling efforts in recent memory. One has to go all the way back to Bill Clinton’s tax-evading cadre of attorney general nominees to get remotely close, and that was a sublimely professional effort compared to what we are seeing out of the nubile Obama administration.

Count ’em. We are now up to four in the illustrious category of nominees to Obama’s cabinet who have had tax problems. Labor secretary nominee Hilda Solis is now on ice:

“A Senate committee today abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama’s nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis to be labor secretary in the wake of a report saying that her husband yesterday paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business — liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years.”

The problem here, at least in my view, is not so much that Solis’ husband had some rather antique tax liens hanging around, but that the Obama administration’s vetting process has revealed itself to be decidedly incompetent. Or, more accurately, arrogant, which really is just a subform of incompetence.

Tom Daschle chauffeured himself out of the running for Health and Human Services, but that was only after the new Treasury secretary Timothy Geither, who also owed back taxes, had been confirmed.  Nancy Killefer, the nominee for Chief Compliance Officer (whatever that is), also withdrew her nomination after it was revealed that she had not paid District of Columbia payroll taxes.

So what’s the deal? Why are so many of Obama’s nominees having tax issues? And why was Barack Obama initially ignoring questions about why so many of his nominees have a hobby of tax evasion? In an interview with Brian Williams, Obama did address the latter question, but in a most troubling fashion:

“President Barack Obama acknowledged Tuesday that he had “made a mistake” in trying to exempt some candidates for positions in his administration from strict ethics standards and accepted the withdrawal of two top nominees, including former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the first major setback of his young presidency.”

It is clear the Obama administration knew about the tax issues of Obama’s nominees, but just didn’t care. The back taxes owed by Daschle came to light on Friday, but the administration stood silent, content to let the process continue, just as it did with Geither. It was Daschle himself who chose to withdraw his nomination from consideration. In short, the Obama administration has willfully and systematically dismissed back tax issues for its nominees as inconsequential.  They not only chose nominees with known tax debts, but then didn’t show an ounce of leadership when those tax problems became public.

The message is clear, no matter how earnestly the president employs Newspeak rhetoric in a vain attempt to muddle it – there are two sets of rules, one for us, and one for them. If they truly believed there was one set of rules, the administration would have taken it upon itself to weed out the tax-encumbered nominees from the process, but they didn’t – and that speaks volumes.

Nathan Moore is a rare breed –  a conservative thinker, author and criminal defense attorney. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and co-authors the political blog http://www.MooreThoughts.com with his wife Sarah, and maintains his own criminal defense blog at http://www.moorelawblog.com .