Like it wasn’t bad enough for Mr. Hope and Change to appoint a Treasury Secretary who intentionally didn’t pay their taxes. Now we find that Tom Daschle, the man Obama appointed to help lead us down the primrose path to socialized British-style health care, is a tax cheat as well.
ABC News has learned that the nomination of former Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to be President Obama’s secretary of health and human services has hit a traffic snarl on its way through the Senate Finance Committee.
The controversy deals with a car and driver lent to Daschle by a wealthy Democratic friend — a chauffeur service the former senator used for years without declaring it on his taxes.
It remains an open question as to whether this is a “speed bump,” as a Democratic Senate ally of Daschle put it, or something more damaging.
The GOP let Geithner slide by because they were worried that whoever Obama would have to replace him with would have been even worse, and with the economic crisis we’re in they wanted that position filled quickly. The whole episode speaks to how dysfunctional our government is, but it makes sense in a warped sort of way. But, there’s no reason to let Daschle slide by here. It doesn’t matter whether his position is filled rapidly at all, and there have to be people better qualified, and far less radical and dangerous than Daschle is. This would be a perfect opportunity for the Senate GOP to make a stand and try out their filibuster. They need to say enough is enough.
I’m sure they’ll filibuster. Right after monkeys fly out of my ……..
Geithner got I think 34 “no” votes in the Senate, and there were 8-10 Republicans who voted for the guy. So a filibuster should be sustainable in Daschle’s case. It would be idiotic for the GOP not to do it. Getting rid of Daschle would go a long way towards preventing Obama from nationalizing the health care system over the next 2 years. In 2010 the Democrats will lose a lot of seats in Congress and then it’ll be too late. Just threaten a filibuster and Obama will probably have to pull the nomination.