(Via @vermontaigne) Three of them.  Need I add that Charlie Rangel is currently under investigation by that committee?

Charlie’s “angels” on the committee include Congressmen Ben Chandler of Kentucky, G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina and Peter Welch of Vermont. All have received donations from Rangel.

Two of them - Chandler (KY-06, R+9*) & Butterfield (NC-01, D+9) - are apparently keeping it, too.  Considering that Rep. Rangel has given money to 119 Congressmen since the ethics probe began last year, you could almost not blame them.  Or almost not blame Rangel for acting as if he was above the laws that he writes:

Congressman Rangel has been arrogant in refusing to discuss how, as the man who writes this country’s tax laws, he failed to report over $1 million in outside income and $3 million in business transactions as required by the House, lapses under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

“I recognize that all of you have an obligation to ask questions knowing that there’s none of you smart enough to frame it in such a way that I’m going to respond,” Rangel said.

Almost.  But trust me, Charlie: the GOP takes back the House in 2010, we’re going to find it really easy to make you respond to the question.

Moe Lane

*Ben Chandler has already acquired a Republican challenger: Matt Lockett.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the former trial lawyer lobbyist who looked out for the interest group while in the state’s highest office — even though doing so meant preventing decreased costs and increased access to care within her own state’s health care system — has a tax problem.

According to this letter from Sebelius to Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, respectively, the Kansas Democrat and her husband hired a CPA to “conduct a thorough review” of their tax returns for 2005, 2006, and 2007 “in preparation for [her] confirmation process as the nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.”

While conducting his review, the CPA found that the Sebeliuses owed $7,040 in federal taxes, which was paid along with $848 in interest.

Read More →

Former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, who is President Obama’s nominee to be the U.S. Trade Representative, failed to pay almost $10,000 in taxes during the past three years 

Washington Post

Treasury secretary nominee Tim Geithner admits he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes

MSNBC

[HHS Nominee Tom Daschle] offered up a timeline to explain how he had overlooked taxes on more than $300,000 worth of income he gained through consulting work, including the use of a car and driver.

ABC News

President Obama’s nominee to be chief performance officer, Nancy Killefer, will withdraw her nomination following the revelation that she had a $946.69 lien on her property in 2005 for failure to pay taxes.

ABC News

In other developments

Investors’ despair about financial companies and the recession has brought the Dow Jones industrial average to another unwanted milestone: its first drop below 7,000 in more than 11 years. The market’s slide Monday, which took the Dow down 300 points, was nowhere near the largest it has seen since last fall, but the tumble below 7,000 was nonetheless painful.

But never fear (susum corda, Doug Kmiec might say), for we have HOPE

At the dinner in the State Dining Room, the Obamas looked comfortable, chatting and smiling with their guests. Afterward, they escorted the governors down the hall to the East Room, which had been arranged with few tables and chairs to encourage dancing to “September,” “Boogie Wonderland” and other hits from a musical group Obama listened to growing up.

The conga line formed after the media were escorted out and, apparently, after Obama had called it a night.

He was merely first in the queue:

Despite the fact that Geithner sailed through the confirmation process—while Daschle went up in flames—Geithner’s tax troubles were actually far more egregious. People tend to give Geithner a pass, because the overall amount he owed was smaller and it just involved Social Security and Medicare, rather than income tax. But Geithner actually acknowledged years ago that he owed the taxes—but didn’t pay them until he was nominated for the Treasury job. That hardly counts as a mistake.

Daschle, for his part, failed to count as income the value of a car and driver he received from a New York private-equity firm, InterMedia Advisors, during 2005-2007. He also overstated charitable contributions and understated income from InterMedia, which paid him $1 million a year. Daschle filed amended tax returns last month reporting $128,203 in additional taxes and $11,964 in interest. The revised tax returns were submitted after President Obama announced that he intended to nominate Daschle to be secretary of Health and Human Services.

Geithner’s situation was nonetheless a bigger ethical lapse. As an employee of the International Monetary Fund in 2001 and later years, Geithner was responsible for sending a check to the IRS to cover his own payroll taxes. He didn’t do so. What he did do was submit a request to the IMF for reimbursement of those taxes. And he collected.

Read More →

It’s a freakin’ epidemic. Hilda Solis, a congress critter and Obama’s nominee for Labor Secretary, is married to Sam Sayyad. He has tax problems.

Geez.

Los Angeles County records showed 15 outstanding state and county tax liens against Sam Sayyad and his auto repair business, totaling $7,630. Two other liens worth $981 were released in 1999 after Sayyad repaid the taxes owed, according to county records.

Solis’ financial disclosures list Sayyad’s business, Sam’s Foreign and Domestic Auto Center, as one of the couple’s main assets, worth between $50,000 and $100,000. The disclosure form Solis filed after her nomination also lists bank accounts containing between $250,000 and $500,000.

Solis and Sayyad were unaware of the liens until USA TODAY asked about them Tuesday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. He said Sayyad paid about $6,400 to Los Angeles County on Wednesday to settle the liens, but he plans to appeal.

How the hell are you unaware of tax liens? Seriously. You get notices. You get bills. And you are not aware?

What is it with these people? Are there any Democrats who pay taxes? Bueller? Bueller?

Nota Bene: And still we will not hear a single Democrat talk about simplifying our tax system. Oh wait, this wasn’t a complicated tax system. This was a flat out failure to pay an assessed tax. Nothing hard here.

On this day ninety-six years ago, February 3, 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. The Sixteenth Amendment gave the federal government to authority to collect income taxes. Today, in an affront to all Americans who have labored these past ninety-six years to pay their fair share – and then some – to the government, President Barack Obama has a tax cheat in charge of the Internal Revenue Service, and had another in line to take the reins at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The withdrawal of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle from consideration for a Cabinet post is an anniversary present for the American taxpayer. Today of all days is a day to celebrate tax cheats getting their just desserts.

Mr. President, on this anniversary of the income tax, can you assure Americans who dutifully pay their taxes in full and on time that there will be no more tax cheats nominated for or discovered to be holding positions of power and influence in your Administration? It’s the least you can do on our anniversary.

The Daschle tax dodge cries out for more attention. Far be it from little old me not to give it. A brief flavor of the piece:

. . . While I have David Boaz to thank for a clever title for this article, I am sure that he joins me in wishing that it never had to be written. Alas, the Obama Administration and its allies seem to have a serious problem when it comes to paying taxes. Or, as House Republican Whip Eric Cantor puts it, “It’s easy for the other side to advocate for higher taxes because you know what? They don’t pay `em.”

Read it all (he said, immodestly). And along the same lines, there is this.

A tremendous amount of attention has been focused recently on Tom Daschle’s $140k tax blunder. It turns out that he didn’t even disclose any of his to Barack Obama after Obama nominated him. Note that this even included not paying the Medicare for his driver.

And people paid attention to now Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s “mistake”(?) of not paying taxes, while collecting the reimbursement for those taxes from his employer.

These aren’t the only Democrats on the national scene with tax troubles. Remember Al Franken, currently in limbo due a contested recount in Minnesota? Do you remember that he too didn’t pay his taxes? From the Politico in April:

But Franken’s admission Tuesday night that his corporation had owed $70,000 in back taxes and penalties in 17 states threatens to upend what has been until now a disciplined, on-message campaign against one of the GOP’s most vulnerable incumbents.

How many more are out there? Who is next?

For all the stories that have come out in the last month about how President Obama has executed the smoothest administrative transition in memory, and how Obama has chosen to enforce the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to the administration vetting and recruitment process, the facts sure do seem to point to an altogether different conclusion — especially in terms of cabinet nominees and senior staff.

Let’s take a quick look at a few members of the crack team Obama has tried to surround himself with since being elected President three months ago.

• Bill Richardson: Nominated to be Obama’s Secretary of Commerce; withdrew when it became public that he was “being investigated by a federal grand jury in his home state for…steering state bond business from the New Mexico Financial Authority toward…a significant campaign contributor.”
• Tim Geithner: Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary (and head of the IRS) failed to pay owed payroll taxes for several years, despite accepting reimbursement from the IMF for those taxes and signing certifications that he had paid them.
• Tom Daschle: Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services owed nearly $102,000 in taxes “on the car and driver a wealthy friend let him use from 2005 through 2007″ and neglected to “report $83,333 in consulting income in 2007.”
• Leon Panetta: The only experience Obama’s choice to be Director of Central Intelligence during the War on Terror and multiple international crises had with the CIA was fighting battles against the leadership and attempting to slash its budget while a staffer in the Clinton White House.
• William Lynn: Within hours of declaring his new no-lobbyists rule, Obama made an exception for Lynn, a lobbyist for the 3rd largest defense contractor in the nation and now an Obama nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Hillary Clinton: While a Senator, Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State “intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband’s foundation.
• Lobbyists of the World, Unite!: Despite repeatedly promising during his campaign that lobbyists would not be welcome in his administration, Obama bent his own new rules and hired over a dozen lobbyists to fill senior staff positions.

The absurd attacks by leftists (and by “conservative” poseurs) on John McCain for his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, and the supposed incompetence of his vetting staff that selection displayed, look very hollow indeed when measured up against the apparent lack of any vetting whatsoever President Obama’s nominees for half a dozen cabinet positions (and countless more senior staff jobs).

Between the lack of vetting, the memory-holing of vital documents posted on WhiteHouse.gov during the Bush years (like, for example, the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, which is now only available via html cache), and Obama’s repeated violation of his own “ethics” rules for the purpose of filling his cabinet and senior staff rosters, the title “smoothest transition in history” appears to be almost exactly the opposite of what this incoming administration’s actions over the last few months deserve.

In fact, the only parts of this transition that have gone smoothly are the parts President Bush handled himself.

Now that should be a scary thought for all those liberals who proclaimed January 20, 2009 to be the day “competence” returned to the White House, shouldn’t it?

“Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. ” Sen. Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S4507.

(H/T to John Pitney via Instapundit)

Well now we know why the Democrats don’t mind raising taxes — they don’t pay them.

Barack Obama has nominated another tax cheat.

With Tim Geithner we were told he was the indispensable man during the economic crisis. What about Tom Daschle? What makes him special?

In truth — nothing makes Daschle special other than he’s one of Barack Obama’s friends.

One tax cheat is enough.

Call 202-224-3121. Tell your Senator to vote no on Tom Daschle.