I expect Timothy Geithner to get all or most of the Democrat Party votes, so his confirmation as Treasury secretary is inevitable, as Democrats don’t need a single Republican vote to confirm him… but if any Republican votes for this crook, I’ll be very upset.
Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, told lawmakers that “substantial” and “dramatic” action will be needed to resolve the financial crisis but said the Obama administration was still determining how best to tackle the problem.
At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. Geithner also apologized for failing to pay some past employment taxes, saying he made careless but unintentional mistakes and corrected the errors.
[…]
While his tax problems are unlikely to derail his confirmation, Mr. Geithner faced some uncomfortable questions over why he failed to pay more than $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes over several years while working at the International Monetary Fund.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) called it “incomprehensible” that Mr. Geithner didn’t realize he needed to pay employment taxes. He also questioned why Mr. Geithner took so long to correct the problem for tax years 2001 and 2002. The payroll-tax errors were discovered during a 2006 Internal Revenue Service audit of Mr. Geithner’s taxes, and he paid what he owed for 2003 and 2004. But Mr. Geithner didn’t pay the Social Security and Medicare tax he owed for 2001 and 2002 until after Mr. Obama indicated in the fall that he planned to nominate him as Treasury secretary.
“I regret having not done that sooner,” Mr. Geithner said. “If I thought about it more, maybe I would have come to it sooner. I did not believe when I settled that audit that I had an obligation to go back. I had not thought about it in the intervening years.”
$34,000 in unpaid taxes is not an “honest mistake.” Anyone who votes to confirm Geithner ought to be ashamed.
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