http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8922441"...However, after careful deliberation, I simply have not been able to overcome my very serious reservations about this nominee.
As Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner would oversee the Internal Revenue Service and would be responsible for ensuring that Americans pay their taxes as required by law. Yet it has come to light that while he was serving as a senior official at the International Monetary Fund, Mr. Geithner failed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. He has stated this was an innocent mistake and that there was no intent to deliberately avoid paying the required taxes.
However, the IMF informs us that in order to avoid exactly this kind of situation, its U.S. citizen employees are fully informed of their obligation to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes and must sign a form acknowledging that they understand this obligation.
Moreover, the IMF gives its U.S. citizen employees quarterly wage statements that detail their U.S. tax liabilities. The IMF pays its U.S. citizen employees an amount equal to the employer's half of the payroll taxes with the expectation that the individual will use that money to pay the IRS.
So a serious question is raised as to how a person of Mr. Geithner's financial sophistication could run the gauntlet of these many warnings and quarterly reminders and still somehow innocently overlook his obligation to pay these payroll taxes. I am also troubled by the fact that when the IRS audited Mr. Geithner in 2006 and discovered that he had not paid his payroll taxes from 2001 to 2004, he, Mr. Geithner, repaid the taxes only for 2003 and 2004. After that audit, he chose not to repay the taxes for 2001 and 2002, years for which the statute of limitations had expired.
Surely, if the failure to pay the payroll tax was an innocent mistake and oversight, then Mr. Geithner would have been eager to make amends by willingly paying the payroll taxes for 2001 and 2002, regardless of the statute of limitations. But he chose not to do so until he learned he was going to be nominated for Treasury Secretary. Given this record of failing to pay taxes, if confirmed as Treasury Secretary, how could Mr. Geithner speak with any credibility or authority as the Nation's chief tax enforcer? Would his admonition be: Do as I say, not as I do? That is not acceptable.
Unfortunately, on another point, Mr. Geithner has been equally unwilling to accept responsibility with regard to his role in the current financial meltdown. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mr. Geithner was a key regulator of the large, mostly New York-based financial institutions that have been at the center of this meltdown. Their reckless practices--reckless practices--have brought America's financial system to its knees, pitching our economy into what could be the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression.
I am specifically concerned about Mr. Geithner's history vis-a-vis Citigroup, which has now received $52 billion in taxpayer money..."
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
