Nancy Killefer Withdraws Over Taxes

Nancy Killefer has withdrawn herself from consideration as Barack Obama’s “chief performance officer” over her failure to pay taxes for household help.

Nancy Killefer says she is withdrawing her candidacy for chief performance officer because she doesn’t want her tax issue to become a “distraction.”

[…]

Killefer failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help. She was the second major Obama administration nominee to withdraw and the third to have tax problems complicate their nomination after Obama announced their selection.

Ugh. What is going on here? The Obama Administration needs to fire some vetters, I think. Timothy Geithner’s tax errors were understandable, in my opinion. Daschle’s were horrific and I think they should be grounds for him to be denied confirmation.

This falls somewhere in between, but surely at this point anyone going for appointed office knows better than to forget to pay household help–it’s one of the most common things people get dragged through the mud for during confirmation proceedings. And for someone who was hired to oversee the detail-oriented work at the White House, this is just embarrassing.

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Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. markm says:

    The Obama Administration needs to fire some vetters

    Are the vetters not the one’s finding the errors in which enlightens the nominee into finally paying???. Maybe the pre-vetter vetters need to be canned?.

  2. Franklin says:

    I believe the vetters knew about every single issue. I think the problem is that somebody thought these issues were not big deals.

  3. Eneils Bailey says:

    She was the second major Obama administration nominee to withdraw and the third to have tax problems complicate their nomination after Obama announced their selection.

    This is getting to be rather comical.

    Maybe the pre-vetter vetters need to be canned?.

    “The Three Stooges” were unavailable for comment.
    Although they left the following message…. “Nyuck…Nyuck…Nyuck.”

  4. markm says:

    I believe the vetters knew about every single issue.

    These issues are old issues so maybe the vetters and Obama thought they were crucial to his plans and gave them a pass.

  5. Bithead says:

    Franklin nails it.
    It’s as I said yesterday. This is simply more confirmation.

  6. Dave Schuler says:

    I’m more interested in the larger conversation. What kind of society do we want to have? Is being casual about paying taxes okay? Okay just for the well-to-do? Are things only wrong when you get caught?

    And how do we make our laws conform to what we want our society to be?

  7. Dave Schuler says:

    On the subject of domestic help, that’s not a problem I’ve ever had myself but my friends and family who have tell me that government at various different levels makes it extremely difficult to do the right thing. Sometimes people just give up in frustration.

  8. JKB says:

    What is the Obama administration going to do when the Republicans actually get organized? This isn’t low-hanging fruit, it is falling off the tree and hitting people in the head.

  9. Joe says:

    So politicians (especially those wealthy enough to afford household help) like to raise taxes, they just don’t like to PAY them? Interesting.

  10. Drew says:

    I used to think I was wise, and had some experience.

    I wondered, “why are Democrats so tax increase friendly?”

    Well, Drew, you dope……..they figured it out, you just don’t pay them!!

  11. Hoodlumman says:

    Heh…

    Dems: Pro taxation… because they don’t pay them!

  12. markm says:

    Just heard Daschle withdrew.

  13. markm says:
  14. Doesn’t anyone in official Washington take care of their own children, clean their own house or drive their own car? And yet, they are not out of touch with “average” Americans.

    Frnakly, charges of hypocrisy have lost their sting. No one seems to care.

  15. Drew says:

    So the so called Chief Performance Officer, can’t perform basic tax reporting.

    Any wonder some of us don’t trust government.

    Chief Performance Officer…….

    Same as it ever was.

  16. Eric says:

    Any wonder some of us don’t trust government.

    I’m sorry, Drew, but is this a joke? I mean, you toadies did nothing but back the Bush Administration on just about every issue, yet here you are today claiming that you don’t trust government? Please.

    Had you been so concerned about Area 51 and black helicopters for the last 8 years, you wouldn’t have been so deep in the hole for your guy and would have been more reasonable and reasoned in your daily analysis at OTB. So spare us the sudden feigned cynicism about how government is just so untrustworthy.

    Boy, I tell ya. There’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around, but there’s no hypocrisy like rightwing nutty hypocrisy.

  17. Bithead says:

    I’m sorry, Drew, but is this a joke? I mean, you toadies did nothing but back the Bush Administration on just about every issue, yet here you are today claiming that you don’t trust government? Please.

    It would be amusing if just once you start thinking before you started typing. It might change your entire outlook. For example, what’s the civics are you talking about in terms of backing Bush? Are they buy chance issues like lowering taxes? Reducing government intrusion?

    I ask because if so that would be completely consistent with not trusting government. I had been quite vocal about backing GWB on a large number of items. So of a lot of others in here. But I for one, was also quite vocal in those areas where he leaned too far to the left, increasing the size of government.

    What all this comes down to is, you’re just ticked about Iraq.