Here are some thoughts on the proposed and likely confirmation for Secretary of Treasury nominee Tim Geithner.
1) If a proposed secretary of the treasury cannot figure out our tax code, how is it that the rest of us should be expected to?
2) Conversely, if it’s not a tax complexity problem, how is it that Geithner, whom we’re told over and over is just brilliant, could screw up his tax returns?
3) Geithner didn’t make “goofs” on his tax returns. Nor did he make “mistakes,” “oversights,” or any other myriad of downplaying terminology. He didn’t pay his taxes for several years. Period.
4) Worse. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) refunds its employees (who are taxed as self-employed) for their taxes. This means that Geithner double dipped — he accepted the IMF stipend to pay the taxes, but didn’t ever pay the taxes! That’s not a mistake. It’s criminal.
5) [Wall Street Journal, Geithner Apologizes Over Taxes, Jan. 21, 2009] “After the Internal Revenue Service audited him in 2006 and discovered the payroll-tax errors, Mr. Geithner corrected them for 2003 and 2004. Only after Mr. Obama picked him last fall to be Treasury secretary did Mr. Geithner pay the Social Security and Medicare tax he owed for 2001 and 2002.” Again, this is Obama’s proposed treasury secretary. This is “Change”? No, it’s more “do as we say, not as we do” from the federal government.
6) The media gave Joe the Plumber a million times more grief for his tax woes. Similarly, could you ever imagine the press giving a tax-cheating Republican nominee such a pass?
7) If you or I made such mistakes, and owed the government $42,000 in back taxes, would we be treated with such kid gloves? Yet tens of thousands of self employed go through this maddening tax code every year with no sympathy from their government.
8 ) The defense that Geithner is not that liberal, and that Republicans could do worse in an Obama treasury secretary, as echoed by some Republicans, may be the case but shouldn’t trump principles. That Republicans seem to have no issue with this simple concept explains why they keep losing elections.
9) The defense, recently repeated by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, that Geithner is the ONLY person who can get us out of our financial woes is ridiculous and insulting to our intelligence. By the way, Geithner has been one of Bush’s chief economic advisors and bailout advocates for the past year. If the bailout didn’t work over the last year, why will it work under Obama? (Also, see #2 above. So much for the financial genius.)