Taxes-and Undocumented Help- Oh My!

Ouch..The Obama campaign gets spanked. The Richardson resignation was sort of a stubbed toe but this is something more painful. President-elect Barack Obama's choice to run the Treasury Department : Timothy Geithner disclosed publicly yesterday that he failed to pay $34,000 in self employment taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication that Senate Democrats tried to brush aside as a minor bump on an otherwise smooth path to confirmation. Nice try. This is not like brushing the crumbs off the table. This is like a spilling a glass of Cabernet and trying not to notice.

So Timothy Geithner paid most of the past-due taxes days before Obama announced his choice in November, according to materials released by the Senate Finance Committee. He had paid the remainder of the taxes in 2006, after the IRS sent him a bill. My question: Why not pay it all off..Mr. President of the Fed ? Just a reminder: this is the guy chosen to lead the nation's economic rescue. Owing taxes as a Treasury Secretary? That's a new one.

The still-unpaid taxes were discovered by Obama's transition team while investigating Geithner's background. Obama's staff told senators about the tax issues Dec. 5.

Geithner, plucked from his job as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to serve as Obama's treasury secretary, told transition officials and senators that he didn't know he owed self-employment taxes when he worked for the International Monetary Fund.

Oh yeah, and about that undocumented house hold help.. yep. It's Zoe Baird and Kimba Woods all over again. Also under investigation is how he came to employ a housekeeper whose legal immigrant work status had briefly lapsed in 2005.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said he still hoped Geithner could be confirmed on Inauguration Day. Yeah, and I still hoped that my skinny jeans fit after the holidays. Sounds like Finance Chairman Baucus and I are dreamers.