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Health Secretary-Designee Tom Daschle Apologizes To Senators For Back Taxes
February 2, 2009 8:29 a.m. EST
Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Health Secretary-designee Tom Daschle has sent a letter to the Senate Finance Committee apologizing for his failure to pay $128,000 in taxes. The former Senate majority leader is set to meet with the panel late Monday.
"I am deeply embarrassed and disappointed by the errors that required me to amend my tax returns," Daschle wrote in the letter, according to ABC. "I apologize for the errors and profoundly regret that you have had to devote time to them. I will be happy to answer any Committee members' questions about these issues."
Daschle had failed to pay for taxes on a car and driver provided to him by Leo Hindery Jr., a Democrat who founded the equity firm InterMedia Advisors. He paid back taxes worth $140,000 on Jan. 2, a week before his confirmation hearing before the he Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
The first nominee of President Barack Obama to have a hearing, Daschle's confirmation seemed a certainty at the time. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on CBS' "Face the Nation" he would wait for the recommendation of the Senate Finance panel before making any definitive statements about the appointment.
"Tom Daschle is very popular in the Senate, has been a great public servant for a long time and all of us know him very well," McConnell added. "But it was surprising...it does raise some questions about the vetting process. First with the nominee for secretary of the Treasury and now with Senator Daschle. I think the administration ought to take a look at its vetting process."
Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner was confirmed only last Monday after weeks of Republican concerns about his failure to pay taxes as an IMF executive several years ago, as well as his employment of a housekeeper whose legal working status had briefly lapsed.
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health committee earlier this month, Daschle had pledged bipartisan healthcare reforms as Cabinet secretary. "We have serious cost problems now," he had said. "If we fail to address the issue of cost, that the situation will double just in the next 10 years alone...I want to reinstate a science-driven environment. I want to take ideology, politics, as much as humanly possible, out of the process and leave the scientists to do their job."
And despite the heavy task of overhauling an increasingly problematic healthcare system that had resisted an ambitious reform effort from former President Bill Clinton, the hearing had been amicable. The Boston Globe had called it "more of a homecoming than a congressional grilling," while the New York Times said it was "a love-fest as senators from both parties expressed admiration for their former Senate colleague."
The only notable kind of "grilling" that may be considered was when the ranking minority committee member, Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY), had asked if Republicans would have a role in crafting legislation reform in a Congress and Cabinet ruled by Democrats. Daschle, who has also been appointed to head the White House Office of Health Reform by President Barack Obama, had indicated that he would reach across the aisle and seek bipartisan solutions.
The 61-year-old Democrat, who served as national co-chair of the Obama campaign, called for the creation of an independent agency modeled after the Federal Reserve that will oversee the nation's healthcare system, in a book published last year entitled, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis."
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