Via WaPo: After Tax Errors Raised, GOP Leaders Defend Treasury Nominee
Was he cheating on his taxes or just sloppy with his finances? Lawmakers vetting the nomination of Timothy F. Geithner to serve as Treasury secretary say they may never be sure. But leading Republicans nonetheless joined Democrats in leaping to his defense yesterday, calling Geithner’s tax gaffes small potatoes compared with his qualifications for saving the global economy.
This is interesting only because if the Republicans didn’t like Geithner, then his failure to properly pay his self-employment taxes would have been considered a capital offense, as far as his nomination was concerned (i.e., it would have been dead to them). Not that this is surprising, as the exact standards by which politicians assess a given situation are almost always situational, and the past gaffes of nominees revealed during the nomination process are typically used by the opposition as a convenient public excuse to oppose a nominee that the opposition was going to oppose anyway. However, Geithner appeals to a lot of Republicans, and so his little tax boo-boo will not derail his nomination.
Meanwhile, more damning concerns have emerged in regards to his nomination, Hugh Hewitt is endorsing it: Confirm Geithner; Approve The TARP Funds, and Get The Stimulus Right. Given Hugh’s record in recent years, that may be enough to give anyone pause.
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January 15th, 2009 at 11:26 am
“Meanwhile, more damning concerns have emerged in regards to his nomination, Hugh Hewitt is endorsing it: Confirm Geithner; Approve The TARP Funds, and Get The Stimulus Right. Given Hugh’s record in recent years, that may be enough to give anyone pause.”
Agreed. When one sees him saying *anything* that I agree with in any way, I doublecheck my thinking, and then take a shower.
January 15th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
I’m absolutely dumbfounded that anyone sees fit to stand behind Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. If I or anyone I know had failed to pay $34,000.00 in taxes we would be in JAIL!
Last I knew tax evasion was a felony. Isn’t that what finally sent Al Capone to prison? If this is the sort of person Barack Obama is looking for in his cabinet we can expect to see William Ayres pop up as the Director of Homeland Security.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Well, no. If you, I or anyone else had done what Geithner did, we would have had to do what Geithener had to do: pay the back taxes with a penalty. Without defending him personally, the bottom line is that this is not an unusual situation.