February 2nd 2009
New Dirt On Daschle
“When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly s*** my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle.” – Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone
One hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars. That’s a lot of taxes to not pay – but Tom Daschle’s mega-tax dodge is something else, too: an indication that the former senator was making a heck of a lot of money. It’s not like he didn’t pay any taxes at all; he just missed paying more than most folks will pay in total federal taxes over several years.
So how much was Daschle, that champion of the Little People making? Well, there’s the $2 million over the last two years he was paid as a senior policy adviser at the Washington law firm (i.e., lobbying firm) of Alston and Bird. Then there’s the $2 million he earned “consulting” for InterMedia Advisors, a NY investment firm specializing in buyouts and industry consolidation.
That sounds a lot like Daschle’s been lobbying, which would be a violation of the oft-violated Obama policy against lobbyists in his admin. But he assures us that he was paid that much for something other than his political influence and was not a lobbyist. Well, maybe there’s another scandal brewing – why Daschle didn’t register as a lobbyist if he was doing something that walked, talked and smelled like lobbying.
So that’s $4 million, before we even get to the speaker fees. AP, the source for the figures above, tells us:
Among the health care interest groups paying Daschle for speeches were America’s Health Insurance Plans, $40,000 for two speeches; CSL Behring, $30,000; the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, $16,000; and the Principal Life Insurance Co., $15,000.
Put another way, Daschle was just making big bucks in fees paid him by the very health and insurance companies he will be regulating in Obama’s regulation-hungry admin. But somehow that’s not a violation of the anti-lobbyist rule.
All in all, Daschle made $5.2 million since leaving the Senate, much of it by playing the political influence game with the health and insurance industries. Will it keep him from being confirmed? Probably not. Is that change we can believe in? Definitely not!
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February 3rd, 2009 at 5:27 pm
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