PrairiePundit

CBS: Educap is a multibillion-dollar student loan charity run by CEO Catherine Reynolds. As CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported Monday night, Educap is under investigation by the IRS and Congress for alleged abuse of its tax-exempt status because it charges high interest on charitable student loans, and provides lavish perks with millions in compensation for Reynolds and her husband. CBS News has obtained exclusive details of what may have been the biggest charity perk: use of Educap's $31 million luxury jet, which costs thousands of dollars an hour to operate. Investigators say for five years, Reynolds jetted friends, family and luminaries to faraway and exotic destinations that sometimes had little to do with the charity's mission. CBS News has learned that high-profile names on the Educap flight list include CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Sens. Tom Daschle and Ted Stevens, former FBI Director William Sessions and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley....

Chris Cillizza: The twin decisions today by former Sen. Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer to remove their names from consideration for senior level posts in the Obama Administration represent the first significant test for a president who has enjoyed near-historic approval ratings to date. During his primary and general election campaigns last year and in his transition to the presidency, Obama put a huge emphasis on competency -- the need to put the best people into high-level jobs regardless of past political disagreements or partisan differences. It's why Obama's choice of Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state was viewed by such a coup inside the White House and why there has been such a focus on finding Republicans -- the latest of which, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) was announced as commerce secretary this morning -- to serve in senior Cabinet roles. Obama said it himself during an interview with Post reporters and editors days before he was sworn in as the nati...

The Hill: Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.C.), President Obama's choice to head Health and Human Services (HHS), withdrew his nomination Tuesday, making him the second Obama nominee to do so in a matter of hours. Daschle, who came under fire over tax issues and money he received from health care lobbying groups, joined Nancy Killefer, Obama's choice to be the nation's first chief performance officer, in withdrawing on one of Obama's worst days in office so far. The White House confirmed that the embattled Daschle had withdrawn his nomination Tuesday. On Monday, when asked if he still supported Daschle to head HHS, Obama told reporters: "Absolutely." ... Daschle's dash to the exits followed closely Nancy Killefer's retreat for a far smaller "glitch" in tax payments. Whether he will stay on as a White House health czar is not mentioned. Anyway, he is going to need to earn some money to make up for what he had to pay in back taxes.

LA Times: Nancy Killefer, picked by President Obama to be the federal government's first chief performance officer, has withdrawn her nomination after reports that she had failed to pay employment taxes for household help. ... The White House this morning said Obama had accepted Killefer's decision to withdraw. "Nancy Killefer has decided to withdraw her nomination, and we accepted her withdrawal," Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said today. Killefer, 55, is an executive with financial consulting giant McKinsey & Co. "I recognize that your agenda and the duties facing your chief performance officer are urgent," Killefer wrote in a letter released by the White House. "I have also come to realize in the current environment that my personal tax issue of D.C. unemployment tax could be used to create exactly the kind of distraction and delay those duties must avoid. "Because of this I must reluctantly ask you to withdraw my name from conside...

Emily Yoffe: ... His spokeswoman says that for InterMedia, Daschle did "extensive work . . . raising funds." Did he spend hours shaking money out of the people in his BlackBerry like some highly paid telemarketer? The Alston & Bird Web site says that he focused "on advising the firm's clients on issues related to all aspects of public policy." Did that mean slogging through endless meetings explaining the intricacies of how to bend the legislative process to the clients' will? Did he make the right calls to get this done? Or was most of his value to these firms the simpler fact that on their payroll was Tom Daschle -- once one of the most powerful people in Washington, and with everything breaking the Democrats' way, likely to be so again? ... "He's the gold standard for integrity in government," said a former aide to Daschle, Andrea LaRue, herself now a lobbyist. In recent months, as the economy has melted down, we have all learned abo...

Marie Cocco: No need to fumble for words that sum up the stew of hypocrisy, arrogance and insiderism that is the unfolding saga of Tom Daschle. This is the audacity of audacity. Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader turned multimillionaire power broker, is defending his nomination to become secretary of health and human services despite having failed to pay all his taxes, despite having failed to tell President Barack Obama's transition team about his six-figure nonpayment before his appointment was announced, and despite having raked in about a quarter of a million dollars in fees for giving his insider insight to health insurers and others that the department he wishes to run happens to regulate. Rush Limbaugh now has the talking points of his most fevered right-wing dreams. Obama's problems are bigger than Rush. With the Daschle nomination and the president's inexplicable support of yet another Cabinet appointee who somehow didn't notice his tax problems...

Jonah Goldberg: During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden insisted that paying your taxes is a patriotic duty. No, scratch that. He said that supporting a tax hike was the American thing to do. "It's time to be patriotic," he told America's putative tax slackers. When asked whether he might be questioning the patriotism of people who don't want higher taxes, Biden, as is his wont, took things to the next rhetorical level. Forget patriotism, insisted Joe, paying higher taxes is a religious obligation. The man who gave an average of $369 a year to charity over the previous decade fulfills his religious obligations by cutting a tax check -- a check he's required to cut by law. Now it's always perilous to take Biden's statements too seriously, but it does seem eminently fair to say that his comments reflect a common, if not universal, attitude among Democrats. Taxes aren't a "necessary evil" so much as a joyous affirmation of the possibi...

Peter Baker: During almost two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to slay the demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and usher in what he would later call in his Inaugural Address a “new era of responsibility.” What he did not talk much about were the asterisks. The exceptions that went unmentioned now include a pair of cabinet nominees who did not pay all of their taxes. Then there is the lobbyist for a military contractor who is now slated to become the No. 2 official in the Pentagon. And there are the others brought into government from the influence industry even if not formally registered as lobbyists. President Obama said Monday that he was “absolutely” standing behind former Senator Tom Daschle , his nominee for health and human services secretary, and Mr. Daschle, who met late in the day with leading senators in an effort to keep his confirmation on track, said he had “no excuse” and wanted to “deeply apologize” for his failure to pay $128,00...

Dana Milbank: Tom Daschle failed to pay taxes on a quarter-million dollars of income related to the chauffeured Cadillac that ferried him about town for three years. But don't call the guy a limousine liberal. When he visited Capitol Hill yesterday to explain his tax problems to senators, Daschle -- President Obama's choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services -- came and went in a D.C. cab. The ride waiting for him on Constitution Avenue was labeled "M. Djebbour Taxi Co." "My failure to recognize that the use of a car was income and not a gift from a good friend was a mistake," the former Senate majority leader explained as his onetime colleagues stood behind him in a display of support. "It was completely inadvertent. But that's no excuse, and I deeply apologize to President Obama, to my colleagues and to the American people." It's unclear whether the American people will accept the apology; they tend to look unfavorabl...

CNN: President Barack Obama's choice to oversee health care reform in his administration expressed regret Monday to Senate leaders over tax issues that are dogging his nomination. Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said he is "deeply embarrassed and disappointed by the errors that required me to amend my tax returns," in a letter dated Monday to the senior Democrat and Republican on the Senate Finance Committee that was provided to CNN. "I apologize for the errors and profoundly regret that you have had to devote time to them," Daschle said in the letter to Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. ... A committee memo obtained Friday by CNN indicates committee members want to discuss the use of a car and driver that Daschle didn't disclose on his income taxes, and nonpayment of taxes on more than $80,000 he earned in consulting fees after leaving the Senate. ... With the taxes he paid for the car an...

Opinion Journal: So Tom Daschle, the erstwhile prairie populist and scourge of multiple Presidential nominees, failed to disclose and pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of income. He also waited months to pay up and told the Obama transition team about his tax oversights only days before his Senate confirmation hearing to become Secretary of Health and Human Services. This one is going to be fascinating to watch, less for what it says about Mr. Daschle than what it will reveal about Democratic standards. Every Republican in America knows that if Mr. Daschle were a Reagan or Bush nominee he'd now be headed back to private life faster than you can say John Tower. That's the way Democrats have treated GOP nominees who were accused of far lesser transgressions than Mr. Daschle's tax, er, avoidance. The question is whether Democrats are going to treat Mr. Daschle according to the standard that Mr. Daschle set when he was running the Senate. And what standard was that...

NY Times: President Obama ’s choice for health secretary, Tom Daschle , was aware as early as last June that he might have to pay back taxes for the use of a car and driver provided by a private equity firm, but did not inform the Obama transition team until weeks after Mr. Obama named him to the health secretary’s post, senior administration officials said Saturday. As Senate Democrats rushed to save the nomination of Mr. Daschle, their former leader, the White House spent the day trying to explain how he survived its vetting process despite his failure to pay $128,000 in taxes. The White House would not say when the president himself learned of the tax issue, but said Mr. Obama is standing by his nominee. “The president believes that nobody is perfect, but that nobody is trying to hide anything,” Robert Gibbs , the president’s press secretary, said in an interview, adding, “I think Senator Daschle rightly is going to have to answer questions, but I think members will be satisfied...

Politico: With President Obama and Senate Democrats rallying behind Tom Daschle after Friday’s revelations of back tax troubles, Republican senators faced a difficult choice—whether to support the Cabinet nomination of a former member of their exclusive club, or strike a clean shot at the new Democratic president. “If this were anyone else, I don’t think there would be any question that [the nomination] would not make it out of the committee,” said a top Senate GOP aide, referring to Daschle’s 18 years of Senate service, including stints as both majority and minority leader. “But he’s a former majority leader, which means a lot to these guys.” Senate Republicans on Saturday were still trying to come to grips with the scale of Daschle’s tax issues, and had yet to decide whether to support him or block his nomination as Health and Human Services secretary. Daschle will meet with GOP and Democratic members of the Finance Committee late Monday. Republicans on the panel want to hear from Da...

Washington Post: Thomas A. Daschle, nominated to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, did not pay more than $128,000 in taxes over three years, a revelation that poses a potential obstacle to his Senate confirmation. The back taxes, along with $12,000 in interest and penalties, involved unreported consulting fees, questionable charitable contributions, and a car and driver provided by a private equity firm run by entrepreneur and longtime Democratic Party donor Leo J. Hindery Jr., according to a confidential draft report prepared by Senate Finance Committee staff. A spokeswoman for Daschle confirmed last night that he recently paid back taxes in excess of $100,000. She said that Daschle, a former Senate majority leader, and his accountant discovered the error regarding the luxury car service and reported it to the committee after his vetting was completed. Daschle paid the back taxes six days before his first Senate confirmation hearing with the Senate Health...

NY Times: President Obama’s pick for secretary of health and human services, Tom Daschle , filed amended tax returns and paid more than $100,000 in back taxes on Jan. 2, administration officials said on Friday. Mr. Daschle concluded that he owed the taxes for free use of a car and driver that had been provided to him by Leo Hindery Jr. , the founder of a private equity firm known as InterMedia Advisors, the officials said. Mr. Daschle was chairman of the firm’s advisory board. In a financial disclosure statement filed this month with the Office of Government Ethics, Mr. Daschle reported that he had received large amounts of income from InterMedia, including more than $2 million for consulting and $182,520 in the form of “company-provided transportation.” The belated tax payments help explain delays in the confirmation of Mr. Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader who had been expected to win swift approval from the Senate. An administration official said that Mr. Daschle had pa...

I can't see men rushing out to duplicate this look. The NY Times does raise questions about Daschle's appointment. President-elect Barack Obama ’s selection of former Senator Tom Daschle for secretary of health and human services posed new questions on Wednesday about how broadly the new administration would apply Mr. Obama’s campaign promises to limit potential conflicts of interest among his appointees. At issue is Mr. Daschle’s work since leaving the Senate four years ago as a board member of the Mayo Clinic and a highly paid adviser to health care clients at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird. In a detailed list of campaign promises, Mr. Obama pledged that “no political appointees in an Obama administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.” ... Did anyone really think a Chicago politician really meant what he said about conflicts of interest? The Obama campaign never...