Tim Geithner, the nominee for Treasury Secretary under Obama, tried to explain away some tax "errors" that came up during his confirmation hearings . It seems he failed to pay about $34,000 in self-employment taxes between 2001 and 2004. He claimed he did not know he owed these taxes when he worked for the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Geithner is a very bright man. He graduated from Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins. And, if confirmed, Mr. G. will oversee the IRS. This is NOT a good example for a Treasury Secretary to be setting for the rest of America. This question of paying taxes is SIMPLE: you either owe them or you do not. It is not a complicated issue.

But, if he were a Republican, the Democrats would be howling with indignation. Instead we have Clueless Harry Reid dismissing the tax problem as just a "hiccup". President Elect Obama said this afternoon: "If you never made a mistake in your life, none of us would be employed."

The problem with this nominaton is the perception that Mr. Geithner got a special deal that you or I would never get from the IRS.The man makes close to $400K as President of the New York Fed. It took him four years to pay the entire tax debt off and the balance was paid off ONE DAY before Obama nominated him last December. Only in the Beltway can you get such special privileges for paying back taxes (and hiring nannies). Now you know why Congress has an approval rating of less than 10%.

It is clear the Democrats will look the other way on this controversy because this man is so brilliant. Can't you just hear the Beltway Blowhards tell everyone that the economy will collapse if Mr. Geithner is not confirmed? Hopefully, the Republicans will grill him on his involvement in the massive bailout of A. I. G. as well as his decision NOT to bail out Lehman Brothers

His A. I. G. involvement and the Lehman Brothers inaction have proven to be disastrous for taxpayers. At the very least we need to know where Mr. Geithner stood on the past bailouts and how he plans on spending the untold billions more bailing out all his Wall Street buddies.

Clueless Harry Reid and Mad Max Baucus will not ask any tough questions during this confirmation process. Perhaps someone will wake up one of the reticent Republicans to get some answers to these important economic questions. After all, a trillion dollars is at stake. And we will all have to pay our taxes on time to pay for all this bail out  nonsense.