The K Street tax cheat who’s lobbying to save Obamacare
Charter member of Team Obama’s Dirty Dozen (get your trading cards here!)
Tom Daschle is a busy, busy bee. He and fellow swamp creatures Bob Dole and Howard Baker — his colleagues at law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird — will “debate” the SEIU’s Andy Stern and others at a joint health care conference. Then it’s off to another speaking gig in L.A. The Sunlight Foundation exposes Daschle’s conflicts of interest that Team Obama doesn’t care about anymore. And my column today reminds readers about the K Street tax cheat who’s lobbying to save Obamcare.
The K Street tax cheat who’s lobbying to save Obamacare
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009
Tom Daschle is the human toe fungus of Washington – a persistent infection that may disappear from time to time, but always comes back with a vengeance.
Despite abandoning his Secretary of Health and Human Services nomination in disgrace in February 2009, the K Street tax cheat who evaded IRS rules for years remains a top White House confidante and policy strategist. In fact, he’s leading the drive to save Obamacare. He climbed up from under the bus back into the Oval Office and onto the sets of Meet the Press and This Week with George Stephanopoulos to offer his rescue plan.
It’s Daschle’s idea to morph the unpopular “public option” into non-profit “health care co-ops” that will almost certainly receive government funding, support, and tax advantages over private insurers. Old colleagues on both sides of the Senate aisle are now promoting his alternative. Last week, he penned a Do It For Teddy Kennedy pep rally op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging Democrats to go it alone and depend on the backroom Senate reconciliation process if necessary to get a deal done.
The White House told the Washington Post that Daschle is simply a trusted “sounding board” and “friend” offering invaluable assistance as an experienced individual with a passion for health care reform. But Daschle is the dictionary definition of a self-interested Washington lobbyist and Beltway swamp creature. Married to heavy-hitting aviation lobbyist Linda Hall Daschle, the former U.S. Senator from South Dakota has earned more than $5 million as a professional back-scratcher since leaving life as an entrenched incumbent. In the parlance of self-exempting Team Obama members, Daschle is merely a beneficent “resource,” as he described himself to the New York Times, serving the Public Interest.
The truth: Daschle is cashing in mightily on his role as “the architect of President Obama’s health care plan” in the private sector – and evading lobbyist disclosure by reinventing himself as a highly paid “senior adviser” to D.C.-based law firm/influence-peddling shop Alston & Bird.
Daschle represents mega-insurer United Health, which opposes the pure public option, and Alston & Bird represents a total of 31 clients from the health care sector. According to D.C. watchdog OpenSecrets.org, “of the $2,730,000 reported income received from clients, nearly 50% of that, $1,070,000, comes from these 31 health care clients.”
Senate ethic rules forbade Daschle from officially lobbying for one year after he was defeated by GOP Sen. John Thune in 2004. Now, it’s 2009. Daschle has raked in millions in speeches and consulting gigs for health care industry clients. He has unfettered access to the White House, which is stuffed to the gills with his former employees – including his former legislative affairs director Phil Schiliro and his former top Senate staffer for 20 years, Pete Rouse, who serves as an Obama senior adviser.
Daschle quacks, talks, and walks like any other federal registered lobbyist. But somehow, the rules don’t apply. And Barack Obama, ultimate agent of Hope and Change, has no problem embracing his interest-conflicted, ethics-challenged dear “friend.”
Let’s not forget: Daschle the Dodger lost his Senate seat after asserting a bogus property-tax homestead exemption claim on his $1.9 million D.C. mansion – which he listed as his primary residence despite voting in South Dakota and claiming it as his primary residence in order to run for re-election.
Let’s not forget: Daschle was aware as early as June 2008 that he might have to pay back taxes for the use of a car and driver provided by a private equity firm, but he failed to inform Obama transition team until weeks after Obama designated him the HHS nominee in mid-December 2008. The donor and personal friend who provided the chauffeured services, Leo Hindery Jr., had also made Daschle chairman of the executive advisory board of InterMedia Advisors, a high-flying investment firm. Daschle collected a million-dollar salary from the arrangement in addition to his private chariot.
Asked why he hadn’t disclosed the cozy arrangement, Daschle “told committee staff he had grown used to having a car and driver as majority leader and did not think to report the perk on his taxes, according to staff members.” It was a perfect expression of the culture of Beltway entitlement.
And let’s not forget: In February, Daschle groveled before his former Senate colleagues to explain away the back payments he owed as well as dubious charitable deductions worth an estimated $146,000, including interest and penalties. Team Obama downplayed it as a “tax glitch.” When Daschle finally withdrew, Obama told the country he had “screwed up” and promised not to repeat the mistake again.
But they never left each other. And now, Obama is trusting this man’s judgment to salvage his government health care takeover. Remember this as the president delivers his joint address to Congress. Obama and Daschle are serving each other’s interests. Not yours.
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What’s it going to take to make these people just go away?
They won’t stop or be satisfied until the USA is a mangled trash heap and they’re “sitting pretty” on top of it.
Why isn’t this clown in jail where he belongs? If any of us pulled the same crap as he has, we would be looking out of the wromg side of the bars. There is just to much selective justice in this country today.
Tom Daschle” Hey, I’m a fun guy!”
Quick! We need fast actin’ Tinactin!
LOL, that’s going to keep me laughing all day.
Michelle – why don’t you review his book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis” so we will know exactly how low in the sewer this elitist dwells? It’s why he was The Won’s first pick for HHS…kill us all off, a little at a time, and then let the rest of the elitists rule in peace.
You know there’s a payoff in this somewhere.
Well, at least he is involved with health care. It’s not like he’s the chairman of an important committee on taxes and hasn’t reported income…oh, wait.
Oh, there’s a negotiated value, alright, and Daschle and his kind will reap huge profits at our expense. People like Daschle who couldn’t make it through the front door have no problem getting in through the back. They can’t create wealth of their own so they have to steal from us.
Sarah Palin has nailed it once again.
Please read.
Tom Daschle,”toe fungus” extraordinaire.MM you have such a way with words!
Don’t forgot his wife worked as a lobbyist for Boeing at the time he was pushing for infamous lease back arrangement for the Air Force tanker program. He was Senate majority leader at the time.
O slams W in his book for using hand-sanitizer when he visited WH. Yesterday O preaches students to wash hands.
Irony Of Fate?
Aren’t there already private “health care co-ops?”
I believe they’re called “insurance companies.”
It would be great if they could cross state lines to compete with each other, wouldn’t it?
A little tort reform wouldn’t be bad, either.
Which is what Glen Beck yesterday said will happen with Van Jones, that Jones will just assume a stealth/advisory role in the administration and still have direct access and influence in the WH.
Odopey is a piece of ____. and if you call me a racist i will bury you with facts other than the color of his skin to prove my point.
IMPEACH OBAMA (aka Odopey) NOW!
Daschle is the puppet master behind Obama , so we owe Daschle for bringing The One to us. Don’t worry though, The One is paying him back –slowly but surely.
According to this article, Daschle has advised The One to ram the bill through by reconciliation in “Plan B” if everything else fails. Wham O-Bam-a!
He has been dirty since day one and we, finally, got him out. Here’s hoping Harry Reid is next!
Toe fungus? Methinks jock itch.
Another good one!
Years ago, we referred to it as jock rot.
Has anyone else experienced that if you click on the comment section for this thread without being logged in, it says there are 0 comments and shows no comments?
John Deaux: still have not gotten your email. Kingfish had trouble with that when he first tried to email me. Earthlink has spamblocker but I should get a message from an unknown address in my suspect mail.
flyover, thanks for the link.
Also, I heard on Mike Gallagher this morning about yesterday’s Thomas Sowell column. Mr. Sowell pointed out that the health care legislation wouldn’t kick in until 2013. He argues that Obama intentionally did this so that a failing and unpopular health care plan wouldn’t threaten his reelection chances.
Just tried it again and it worked normally but have experienced this on some other threads.
Why can’t WordPress get all this ironed out, the crazy numbers and the monster thread is still dead.
As Kinky Friedman would say, “How hard can it be?”
“tort reform”
We are going to hear this now. I can assure you. Democratic operatives using the phrase all over TV yesterday.
That does not mean it is a good thing.
If you think the 1100 pages of a health care bill written by primarily lawyers was a garbled mess of gobble-de-goop, you wait to see the bill that is “tort reform”.
Every scumbag gets a free pass as long as he is a valuable asset to the “team” that is destroying our country. Obama is always ready with a long verbal dissertation, blinding everyone with flowery explanations to cover up the illegal, unconstitutional work of his staff, his czars, his consultants, his friends, and so on. I heard yesterday that Obama has given more speeches than days he has been in office. I mean, this guy really likes to flap his jaws.
One question I would like to ask is compared to the private sector what are the administrative costs per policy of a policy administered by the government compared to one managed say by Blue Cross/Blue Shield?
I remenber a CBO figure that once stated that for every welfare dollar spent only 28 cents made it to the welfare recipient. That is an indicator of how efficient healthcare administration will be.
Someone needs to qualify in terms of cost per policy whatthe expected administrative overhead will be. My guess is that its ASTRONOMICAL.
I read Sowell’s article and he makes an excellent point. All we hear with these ram-it-down-our-throats bills is how urgent it is that we enact this legislation only to sit and wait once the vote is done.
I see the growing unrest in the constituency as a sign that people are becoming increasingly fed up with ‘the-sky-is-falling’ legislation.
Agreed. The devil is in the details.
Daschle is the booger you can’t flick off your finger.
daschle is like genital herpes, that sore that hangs around than disappears but never really goes anywhere until it’s time to be the sore again. and regrettably there is no cure for either one.
lgm, if you’re lurking out there I read this and thought of you.
Oh, goodie, can I play?
How about Daschle is a dingleberry?
And silly you for noticing that!
Bad conservative!
Get in the corner!
Ok–I’ll play!
Daschle is that piece of dog poop that sticks to your flip flop in the summer, and you don’t notice it until you get in the house, and the poop is flung off whilst walking and flies through the air & sticks on the wall.
Oh, and you don’t see it until later & wonder what stinks.
Remind me not to walk a mile in your shoes.
Me too!
Daschle is a hemmorhoid whose burning itch cannot be quenched, not even with a cheese grater!
I never wear flip flops–but I do love playing ‘Balderdash’.
oooh, scary visual.
Did you guys ever play the game “which would you rather do”? Here’s an example:
I’d rather slide down a razor blade slide on my belly than listen to Obama’s
speechlies tonight.I wouldn’t send a dime of my money to a project supported by a guy like this. Who knows what’s in it for him, even if we didn’t know?
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
There is nothing he can say tonight that will sway me. Heard enough from him long ago.
But will listen to the Republican rebuttal. Supposed to be a guy from Louisiana who was a heart surgeon for 20 years.
crooks and slugs slip slide around in the slime. shine light, dry up the slime and these slugs die off.
post of the day….can we apply the Tinactin to the entire D.C. area??
How’s about Preparation H? It more closely fits that part of the body that reminds me of most politicians!
Anyone know of a site where the preliminary manifestation of the equivalent of the Ten Commandments of government run health care will be revealed by the Messiah tonight? Can’t hang around for the 2 hour speech due to the standing applause for every third word from the TOTUS. I’d just like to read the 15 min speech for myself without benefit of Congressional benediction.
By Choice–and when one sifts out the ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’, you’re left with a fart in a whirlwind!
The way around all of this socialist nonsense is for doctors and patients to go underground – cash/barter under the table.
Then not only does the federal government get what they deserve, ZERO control, they also get less tax revenue as well.
If not paying taxes was good enough for Daschle…
I think I saw that on Storm Chasers on the Discovery channel!
Michelle,
Have you copyrighted or trademarked (whichever appropriate) “human toe fungus”?
I predict you will see LOTS of signs in the coming months!
It also needs a consumer warning to avoid lawsuits about spittakes of milk.
and the “birthers” may finally get THEIR day.
WND has story and links to the court docs signed today. Trial date in January
Will Obama follow the thoughs of Pelosi and Reed, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Obama told her and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during a White House meeting Tuesday that his message would essentially be: “If you have a better idea, put it on the table.”
I have a better idea. “Take government run health care off of the table.”
Most of those listening to Obama only want to have their ears tickled by things pleasing to them.
Michelle O. looks like she is on the receiving end of one of the government’s new colonoscopies. They are very cost efficient. No anethesia required.
I think Jack Webb got it right!
see here
Even when you retire these scumbags, their hands find their way back into the honeypot. When you either retire, or are forced to retire, you should be permanently removed from DC.
I feel like our republic is dying because our politicians profit at our expense. The nepotism and insider dealing on both sides of the political aisle has polluted Washington. Daschle is another fine example of how corrupt our politicians have become and how determined they are to make a buck at the expense of both taxpayers and our republic.