The Worst Joke Ever (Updated with Bipartisan BS Detector)

Hey, did you hear the one about the guy who didn't pay taxes for four years? He went on to become the Treasury Secretary for a Democrat president.

Wait, that's not funny. And it's not a joke. Timothy Geithner won Senate confirmation tonight, 64-34. Apparently you can skip out on paying certain taxes from 2001-2004 and still win 64 votes to become the Secretary of the Treasury. And a handful of the votes for you came from members of the GOP, the alleged party of fiscal responsibility. This really is the land of opportunity.

You'd think that not paying $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes would be a point of concern, but not in this new era of Hope! and Change! The man who's in charge of the agency that goes after deadbeats for not paying taxes is a deadbeat himself. The inmates are running the asylum.

But we can take hope (Hope!) that at least a few senators had reservations about confirming this man to run the Treasury. As Geithner was tap-dancing out of committee to move to a floor-vote, North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad said, " On the matter of Mr. Geithner’s failure to pay certain self-employment taxes, I find it completely unacceptable." Wonderful! So he's going to vote against him, right?

"I’m a former tax commissioner," he continued. "I’ve dealt with hundreds of cases like this one, and in normal times that alone would lead me to oppose his confirmation."

Uh oh.

"But these are not normal times,"

Don't do it.

"and I personally don't think we can afford a further delay in the filling of this critically important position."

And the Daytime Emmy goes to the senator from North Dakota. Ladies and gentlemen, Kent Conrad.

So according to him, he's seen this kind of thing firsthand, and if the economy wasn't in the toilet, this guy would be laughed out of Washington. But these, folks, are not normal times. The only man in America who can run the Treasury Department at this critical time is a man who went years without paying his taxes. Despite your misgivings, Condor, you have no choice but to vote for this man. Such moral courage, Senator. Such fortitude!

This was such a simple issue to garner support for because it's so simple to understand: A man who breaks laws should not be allowed to run the organization that enforces those laws. Like the House bank scandal in the early 90s, it's something that anyone can understand. You can't write checks for money that's not yours and you shouldn't be able to get away with not paying taxes and expect to serve in a position of authority over taxes. At the very least, if you can't manage your own money, how can we trust you to manage the nation's money?

There are some votes against Geithner's confirmation that are unexpected but pleasant, such as Russ Feingold, Tom Harkin, Bernie Sanders, and former Klansman Robert "Sheets" Byrd. But many spineless Senate Republicans, who are dropping their trousers, bending over, grabbing their ankles, and receiving the dry, hard Democrat majority with a smile, missed a hand-made opportunity to make a stand on principle. If they're not going to stand up and fight for something so simple for citizens to understand, then why should we expect them to stand up for other issues?

But at least Republican voters can count on old conservative bulldogs to stand up for them in the Senate. Strong, tough men like Orrin Hatch, a real man's man who spends his free time growing chest hair and wrestling grizzly bears. He said that President Obama "deserved support on his selection of cabinet officials, unless you can show me some lack of integrity or some criminal conduct or some really offensive conduct on the part of a nominee."

A lack of integrity or criminal conduct? Like, say, not paying taxes? Apparently not. When I get audited for not paying taxes, I'm going to tell the IRS it's no big deal because Secretary Geithner did it too. I'll let you know how that goes.

UPDATE: Here's part of a statement made by Tom Harkin (D-IA), explaining why he voted against Geithner's confirmation:

He has stated this was an innocent mistake and that there was no intent to deliberately avoid paying the required taxes. However, the [International Monetary Fund] 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 ... 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.