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Susan Collins can’t vote for a Tax Cheat for Treasury Secretary

by Albert Milliron | January 26, 2009 at 02:33 pm

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By Albert N. Milliron, Editor Politisite.com, Iron Mill Interactive Media, Inc.

Susan Collins the Republican Senator from Maine, who is considered a RHINO (Republican in name only) by most Conservatives has come out and stated that she, Can't vote for a Tax Cheat for Treasury Secretary".

This has become the Obama Administrations first fight on Capital Hill as Senators remark that even the left said that comments by Joe the Plumber were untrustworthy because he had tax issues. Other Senators have brought up the signature line in IRS documents that Nominee Timothy 'I suck at Turbo Tax' Geithner signed when he filed taxes from 2001-2004 and when he was audited in 2006 that said he would PAY for any taxes owed.

Says Senator Sessions of Alabama, How can we trust him? Especially when we expect folks to pay all of their taxes. Many Republican Senators are putting up a united front on rejecting the Nominee.

One Exception is Utah's senator Orrin Hatch who states he has spoken with him, things his explanations are adequate, and that his mistakes were honest, and will vote for Him for secretary of the Treasury.

Co-starring Andrea Mitchell, playing devil’s advocate for Obama the way any objective journalist would. The floor vote’s scheduled for 6 p.m. ET; Geithner will, of course, sail through, but watching one of the Senate’s foremost RINOs make the case against him here leaves me intrigued about the final tally. I’m betting 70/30, with Orrin Hatch’s case of Geithner fever infecting roughly 10 Republicans. Anyone want to take the under?

In fairness, he partly redeemed himself with this:

Hatch closed by saying that there is a double standard for nominations, and Geithner is benefiting from it. If a Republican nominee had Geithner’s tax record, Hatch said, he or she would have been attacked by Democrats and the media, and “the president would have had no choice other than to withdraw the nomination.” “A Republican nominee in Mr. Geithner’s position would not have even gotten a committee vote,” Hatch said.

The boss thinks this should be an obvious party-line no vote, and after some rumination, I agree. We have to pick our spots in opposing The One at this point, partly because he’s so popular at the moment and partly because we don’t want the force of a no vote diminished by opposing everything and coming off as mindless obstructionists. But Obama’s other appointees have all been rubber-stamped; only Holder will catch static, and with good reason. If you can’t draw the line on a tax cheat at Treasury, where can you draw it? Thumbs down.