Hang down your head, Tom Daschle

Benjamin Kantack
UNL Student Political Science and Spanish Major


Remember when Joe Biden told America it was patriotic to pay more taxes?

Tom Daschle doesn't.

The former Senate Majority Leader was on track to become the Director of Health and Human Services – as well as the director of the newly-minted White House Office of Health Reform – for the incoming Obama administration. But he withdrew his name from the nomination process after allegations came to light that he owed more than $140,000 in unpaid taxes and concomitant interest for the use of a car and driver, according to the website of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Daschle joins Nancy Killefer and Timothy Geithner on the list of Obama nominees tainted by tax fraud.

What makes the whole tax hoopla hilarious, though, is neither the irony of a change-monger like Obama employing a Washington insider like Daschle, nor the irony of a former member of Congress's tax-writing Finance Committee eating his words, nor the irony of a liberal who doesn't pay his taxes. No, the piece de resistance is Tom Daschle's alleged "devotion" to avoiding the perils of lobbyism and money-grubbing.

In a February 5th article from the New York Times, Daschle's former Senate colleagues extolled him as a man who strived to keep his nose clean of lobbying activities. Indeed, Daschle started out just like any other innocent Washington outsider: when he ran for Senate in 1986 from his seat in the House of Representatives, a campaign ad depicted him driving his beat-up 1971 Pontiac to work in Washington, among limousines and BMWs. The voiceover asked, "Isn't it too bad the rest of Washington doesn't understand that a penny saved is a penny earned?"

Since his greenhorn days, Daschle has gone from a modestly-transported neophyte to an opulently-chauffeured political giant – and if he hasn't explicitly lobbied, he has certainly fudged the definition of such activity. His wife was a lobbyist for the aviation industry, and the $2 million home they share in upscale Washington is a fruit of her efforts. After losing his Senate seat in 2004, he went to work for Alston & Byrd…a lobbying firm. He also made $220,000 speaking for health care companies, which many senators worried might have created a conflict of interest, according to the New York Times last week. And Daschle played other, less-publicized games with his tax dollars, such as garnering a deductable for a charitable donation, even though the recipient was not an officially recognized charity and the gift nondeductible by current tax law.

But not everyone is disgusted by Daschle's trickery. Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota dismissed the allegations: "I don't know anyone more honorable, more decent, more honest, and more qualified for this position. The only reason we know about these tax issues is that Senator Daschle came forward."

Hold on: the only reason Tom Daschle's tax bill came to light is because he spilled the beans himself? Shouldn't that indicate that President Obama's vetting process for nominees is horribly inadequate? I'm almost afraid to speculate what other scandalous nominees are slipping under the radar of a Congress full of Democratic yes-men – especially when the number of tainted nominees has now risen to four, three of which involve tax fraud.

As Tom Daschle exits the scene of national politics amidst the stench of his own quasi-lobbyist status and tax cheating, we can only hope that President Obama will be encouraged to carefully scrutinize all his nominees in order to pick out any more rotten apples.