Where is the Outrage?

One of the great hopes of the new Obama administration was his promise of transparency and re-establishing people’s trust in its government. That hope was shattered with the appointment and confirmation of Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. In these challenging economic times, a rather pedestrian cabinet appointment has been catapulted into one of the most powerful positions in the United States. This man will be in charge of supervising the Obama administration’s economic recovery plan, responsible for the disbursal of hundreds of billions of dollars and restoring confidence in the nation’s financial system and institutions. Trust and honesty should be the hallmark of the office. Instead, we got a tax cheat and a liar. We should be outraged.

Mr. Geithner is no slouch. For a relatively young man, he has had an illustrious career, including heading up the New York Federal Reserve Bank, no small post. He also was a protégé of Robert Rubin when Rubin was Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton. FYI, Rubin went on to be a big wig at Citigroup, and was a major promoter of Citigroup’s growth policies which ultimately led to its near collapse. Rubin recently resigned from the Citigroup Board of Directors.

The problems with Mr. Geithner came from his stint as the Director of the Policy Development Department for the International Monetary Fund. Because of the nature of the organization, the IMF did not pay its ½ of Mr. Geithner’s FICA tax. The agreement was Mr. Geithner was to pay the tax as a self-employment tax, and file for reimbursement of ½ the amount from the IMF. Mr. Geithner didn’t pay any of the tax, but filed for and received reimbursement for the unpaid tax from the IMF. In addition, he deducted his children’s summer camp expenses as a child care expense.

He was cited in 2006 for nonpayment of the taxes for 2001 – 2006, but only paid the taxes for 2004 and 2006 claiming a statutes of limitations issue for 2001 and 2002. It was only after he was nominated for Secretary of the Treasury that he ’fessed up and paid the amount owed plus a small penalty.

In true “that’s my story and I’m sticking with it” fashion, this former head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, this former Undersecretary of the Treasury, this Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Markets Committee, with numerous degrees in economics and business and international affairs….said he was careless. He blamed TurboTax for not finding the error, which made it worse because he apparently did his own taxes. If you believe him, I have some swamp land in Florida I would like to talk to you about.

This man is now head of the Internal Revenue Service, and I can guarantee you that if you were to make a “careless” mistake, he would not afford you the same understanding that the United States Senate afforded him.

If he were a Republican, he would be in jail right now. There would be calls from the press for numerous investigations about this outrage. The press, however, still refuses to crawl out of Obama’s tank, even to criticize a lying tax cheat. You mean out of all the talented people we have in the United States, this is the only man who can do this job??

More than that, it shows the disconnect between our elected officials in Washington, and the people they are supposed to represent. There is a set of rules for the elite, and then there are the rules for the rest of us. Obama said he was going to end that.

Shame on Mr. Geithner…Shame on Barack Obama.