Tom Daschle: Done

President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services has a problem.

Tom Daschle didn't pay income taxes on what he called "a gift from a good friend," specifically a car and driver that were provided to him for a couple of years by Leo J. Hindery Jr., the owner of InterMedia, a New York private equity firm. InterMedia was paying Mr. Daschle a salary of a million dollars a year for "consulting services," and the car and driver were thrown in as a perk.

There was also some unreported income and some improper tax deductions for charitable contributions.

"Inadvertent errors," Mr. Daschle said. "Nobody's perfect," the White House press spokesman explained.

Mm-hmm.

Here's the problem.

Tom Daschle isn't some newcomer to federal tax law. He's the former Majority Leader of the United States Senate.

The Senate regularly debates and votes on legislation that makes the American people pay taxes on all kinds of income, gifts included. And Senator Daschle served on the Finance Committee.

So he knew perfectly well that he owed taxes on a gift from an employer or client or friend or supplicant or lobbyist or influence-buyer or however you want to characterize his relationship with Mr. Hindery and InterMedia.

There's just no way around it.

The Obama team dug out the fact of this gift during the vetting process and the former Senate Majority Leader paid $140,167 in back taxes and interest.

But that's not going to be good enough.

Not for the man whose job description includes drafting a proposal for the overhaul of the nation's health insurance system.

One of the things you need in government, if you want people to trust you, is credibility. People have to believe that you're exercising your very best judgment based on all the facts and nothing else.

Nothing else.

If people look at your proposal and believe it's the accumulated wish list of a lot of wealthy and well-connected friends and lobbyists, they are not going to accept your word that it's the best that can be done.

In the last two years, Tom Daschle made almost $5.3 million dollars as a "consultant," including $220,000 in speaking fees from organizations and companies with a direct interest in health care reform legislation.

While he's returning favors, President Obama's health care reform proposal will be dying the death of a dog.

Of course, that will probably happen anyway. There's no way to give everybody everything they want at everybody else's expense, which seems to be everybody's definition of a health care system that works for everybody.

President Obama may not know that yet. He's been in office less than two weeks and likely still believes he can part the Red Sea if he just invites the right fish over to the White House for drinks.

And hey, we wish him good luck with that.

But if he wants anybody to believe he's serious, he'd be well advised to throw Tom Daschle out of the boat.


Copyright 2009

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