Paleo, in his fine diary, Daschle needs to go, states:
It's not the first time he, and his lobbyist wife, have shown an insensitivity to public perception and a blind eye to ethical concerns. Daschle needs to go.
Although Paleo cites additional ethical concerns and brings Daschle’s wife into the matter (?), his links to NYT, Politico and ABC News focus mostly on his recent tax difficulties, along with the fact that approximately 5% of his income in the past two years came from health care-related entities.
There may be legitimate arguments against Daschle, and his financial and other ties to the health care industry need to be scrupulously reviewed and his view of his health care mandate and his willingness to carry it out need to be clearly articulated, but we are cheating ourselves out of a very important discussion of health care and other broader issues if we (and the Senate) make the confirmation process all about Daschle’s taxes.
Daschle’s tax difficulties provide a great case study in the framing of issues, and how Republicans have tended to be more successful than Democrats at it. As we all know, the Republicans have a long history of hyping personal matters, and that they are not always sincere in these frames, often using them as a weapon to derail policies they oppose ideologically. The media all too often has obliged the Republicans. The Politico’s business model literally is based on hyping such controversies. dday also wrote about Daschle:
If you're on Twitter, I strongly recommend you find a right-wing mouth-breather Congressman to follow on the site and read them carefully. You'll get the talking points hours or even days before they show up on the teevee. For example, my favorite right-wing Twitterbug, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), has offered his sage thoughts on this Tom Daschle tax story.
Daescle(sp?)/Geitner/Rangel all avoided/cheated on taxes! Daescle latest! They don't mind raising taxes because they don't pay them.
He got two of the three names wrong, including Daschle, who was Senate Majority Leader when Hoekstra chaired the Intelligence Committee (!) and therefore was in all the Gang of Eight meetings with him.
But let's get off spelling for a second. The soundbite is that Democrats don't mind raising taxes because they don't pay them. Har giggle snort glorf!! So let's pre-but this statement in case it's used by George Will or David Brooks tomorrow morning.
dday’s point was that Republicans may want to tread carefully because of the class issues, their obvious hypocrisy in making such arguments and that the fact this may not ultimately accrue to their political advantage. (This diary is an expansion of a comment I left there.)
Both Paleo and dday raise great points and I agree as far as the committee thoroughly investigating Daschle and the Republicans’ treading carefully in using class issues to go after Daschle. But I disagree on the reasons why: the issues are a lot broader than Daschle’s tax situation and the likelihood that you would find similar tax problems with members in both parties. The broader issue that Democrats should consider before going after Daschle is how the Republicans’ are framing the issue and the broader issue that the Republicans should consider before going after Daschle is proportionate lack of accountability in governance. The broader issue about which everyone should be concerned - obviously - is getting the right person in place to guide health care reform.
First of all, it seems that many who generally are on "our side" are already accepting the frame that Daschle "cheated" on this taxes. This frame implies that Daschle was guilty of criminal intent to defraud the government out of taxes that were due to them. We are a very, very long way from the deduction that Daschle displayed any such will or intent, particularly that Daschle self-reported the errors to the IRS, presumably by filing amended returns. Even though one could argue that this was only done as a result of the vetting process, Daschle apparently was forthcoming on the errors. It appears that transparency and accountability ruled the day, which is quite a switch from our previous administration. I would throw this point back at the Republicans every chance I get.
He’s no John and Cindy McCain, but Daschle has a large number of business dealings involving high dollar amounts and that these errors and omissions on his returns were likely no more than just a small fraction of his total income and deductions for the three years. And, remember, the numbers being reported in the newspaper article that dday cites covered a period of three years.
Paleo’s diary had a long thread and I may have missed similar comments, but these comments by FoundingFatherDAR
As a CPA let me say that non-reporting of personal use of a company car is a common error. Whether it was due to oversight or a deliberate attempt to fudge is something only Daschle and his tax preparer (if he uses one) know at this point.
As to the speaking fees, it's not clear from the article that you Cut & Pasted (in abuse of Fair Use limits) whether the speaking fees were paid directly to Daschle or to some group he was representing. If the former, where were the Form1099s that should have been issued by the payee?
and stella0710
The more money you have and the more sources of income you have the more complicated taxes get. I expect that an accountant did his taxes. If that is the case then the accountant simply missed this stuff...it was a mistake. Furthermore, I doubt that Daschle felt like his public career was over. Therefore, he would have anticipated some sort of public vetting in the future and it would have been completely irrational for him to intentionally not pay the correct amount of taxes.
And no, I am not shocked and outrage that someone who wrote a book on healthcare reform got paid to speak to people in the healthcare industry.
were spot on.
As dday also noted, the tax code is multi-layered and complex. To expect Daschle to know all the rules given his apparently intricate business dealings is absurd. That is why those such as Daschle hire accountants. That is why the IRS provides for amended returns, to allow taxpayers the opportunity to self-correct errors discovered at a later time. That is why IRS provides for levels of penalties ranging from the civil (like a traffic ticket, with penalties and interest) to the criminal (like a bank robbery, with jail time). In applying criminal penalties, the IRS looks at the facts and circumstances to determine will and intent to defraud the government. Based on the information in the WaPost article, there is nothing here in the same galaxy as criminal intent.
This doesn’t excuse the errors, and I would not want to be Daschle’s accountant today, but this looks very much more like a speeding ticket than a bank robbery. As noted in the WaPost article, Daschle paid $12,000 in penalties and interest in addition to the taxes due - again, over the three-year period.
Speaking of bank robbery (and proportionate accountability), what Daschle under-reported for the three-year period actually does is give us a better feel for the magnitude of the theft of our national assets perpetrated by our previous administration. It would take thousands of Daschle’s to make up for one of any number of scandals that went down under Bush during his administration’s complete abdication of fiscal responsibility and honesty. Daschle owned up to his much-smaller-dollar problems. Where is Hoekstra and the other Republicans' hue and cry for the Bushies to do the same?
This seems more like a political opportunity for Obama and the Democrats than a problem to me. Whether or Daschle makes it or not is almost immaterial to the fact that with Obama being open about Daschle’s (and Timothy Geithner’s) tax issues, they’ve already demonstrated more transparency and accountability in two weeks than the Bush administration did in eight years.
Health care and the disproportionate amount of power certain elements such as insurance companies have attained in providing it is important as any issue going forward. For the declining numbers of us lucky enough to even have health care coverage, we all have our stories of the exponential increases in premiums accompanied by higher co-pays and how the insurance companies can now dictate treatments and even the prescriptions we are allowed. I would much rather have the Senate focus on how Daschle is going to deal with that than how he screwed up his taxes.