The repeated ironies and hypocrisies are too delicious to resist, so herewith follows a brief post on the Daschle tax holiday flap. From Bloomberg.com's Daschle Raised Tax Question in June, Finance Report Says comes the detail that one could not invent:
Medicare Payments Due
The former senator has agreed that he will have to adjust again his 2005, 2006 and 2007 tax returns because he didn’t pay Medicare taxes on the additional taxable income he incurred with the use of the car, the Finance Committee staff reported.
As Health and Human Services secretary, Daschle would oversee Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly and disabled.
As a reminder, Mr. Daschle apparently consulted with his accountant in June 2007 because the former Senator suspected that the private use of a chauffered limo was in fact a taxable service, paid back taxes and interest in January 2008 after being nominated for Secretary of Health and Human Services, but no one noticed the continued underpayment (!?).
There is a wild and crazy pattern here. Mr. Obama feels that only a tax evader, Mr. Timothy Geithner, is the right person to run the Treasury Department; by far the greatest number of Treasury employees work for the Internal Revenue Service. Now, Mr. Obama feels that despite having no special expertise in healthcare policy, the right person to run HHS is Mr. Daschle, a lawyer who, despite having an accountant, was apparently unaware that there is a 2.9% surtax on earned income allegedly to finance Medicare.
Not to forget, but the new Secretary of State famously shot her Presidential candidacy in the foot when she repeatedly told the untrue story about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire as First Lady.
Next, to replace Mr. Gates as Defense Secretary, a draft dodger?
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