San Francisco Liberal Examiner Editorial 2/3/09
There are multiple lessons to be gleaned by President Barack Obama from the withdrawal Tuesday of former Sen. Tom Daschle as the White House nominee for secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Here are four:
- What usually works in Chicago to quell ethics controversies doesn’t wash in the nation’s capital. You should think twice about advice you get in the future from your advisers, who thought your November aura was still sufficiently bright enough to get Daschle confirmed. They thought Daschle could just say he’s sorry he forgot to pay $128,000 in taxes owed for his use of a limo and personal chauffeur provided by a big-bucks Democratic donor and media baron, then waltz to the White House to fill the dual roles of your health reform czar and HHS head. This isn’t Chicago.
- Having made strong public defenses of two of your three major nominees with tax problems, you have become a defender of Washington’s business-as-usual culture and given up the opportunity to portray yourself as the man who was going to bring change to the Potomac. It was a huge mistake to condone conduct by your Treasury and HHS secretary nominees that would have ruined the reputation of most people. Most of us would have our wages garnished, our bank accounts emptied and liens filed on our homes by the Internal Revenue Service.
- The bigger and more pervasive government becomes, the more difficult it is to find qualified, talented people to serve in high positions who don’t have multiple conflicts of interest.
Washington is overrun with former senators, representatives, executive-branch appointees, career civil servants and congressional staffers who are getting rich peddling influence. Daschle was notable, but far from unique, in having used his “political savvy and influence” to earn more than $5 million in a mere four years, as noted by The New York Times.
The solution is less government — not ever-more-complicated ethics regulations — so that fewer influence seekers look to former Washington big shots such as Daschle.
- The federal tax code must be shorn of its bewildering complications, exemptions, deductions and credits so that every taxpayer can pay either with a flat tax return the size of a postcard or a reformed version of the present system. Surely, if the tax code is too confusing for the Treasury secretary and former Senate majority leader — to say nothing of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, who also has unpaid tax problems — it is past time to get out the chain saw.
