Every once in a while, a glimmer of sunlight peeks out and someone notices the “civil servants” are acting a little too much like civil masters.
Congressmen John Carter (R-TX) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) yesterday introduced the Geithner Penalty Waiver Act, requiring that the IRS assess the same penalty against U.S. taxpayers that came forward in the UBS tax fraud investigation as paid by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for failing to pay taxes on his IMF income — zero. From Congressman Carter’s press release:
Carter says the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandates equal penalties for similar offenses, and that the failure of the IRS to assess any penalties against Geithner demands similar penalties for all taxpayers with substantially equivalent cases. “This bill seeks to codify what is now established by the law of precedent,†says Carter. “The Geithner case has established a legal precedent for the determination of penalties by the IRS, and that precedent can be cited in all federal tax courts. The penalty is now set at zero.†“Taxpayers who willfully attempt to evade paying their fair taxes should pay a penalty, or our tax code becomes unenforceable,†says Carter. “This bill is not to reward tax evaders, but to defend the Rule of Law itself. If we as a nation choose not to enforce the law against the politically privileged, then we cannot enforce the law against others without undermining respect for the law itself.â€
Do you think they could offer up a similar bill requiring all politicians and bureaucrats to be on the same healthcare program that they finally pass.
There should be no separate program for the “politically privileged.”
Louisiana Congressman John fleming 4th District has an online poll asking
Do you feel Members of Congress should be forced to enroll themselves in the health care plan they vote for?
http://fleming.house.gov/index.html
I would go one further, and advocate that Members of Congress, the President, and the Judiciary should have to participate in every plan that is forced upon the American citizenry. That means Social Security instead of the ridiculously cushy pension plans that are now in place.
I’ve been grumbling about the “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” rule that Geithner’s case and others have shown. To borrow a phrase from Denninger: “is the government the cops, or the felon?”.
There is also a case to be made that the same thing is happening with the banks – things that are felonies (accounting fraud) for you or I to do, are now common practice since our politicians changed the law regarding banks accounting practices and their “mark to fantasty” instead of the previous “mark to market”.
Or how about some of these huge investment banks getting away with blatant insider trading activity. Millions of dollars of shares get sold by their executives and hours later the company announces something that drastically crashes share value. You or I would go to prison, while no one is even charged when they do it.
DanielW, I suggest you take a step back even further. Our own government does not meet any of requirement of Sarbannes Oxley. Fannie and Freddie do not comply. Why have our politicians passed laws which cost public companies millions of dollars for compliance when their own entities do not abide by them?
Try talking to the Texas state’s office of Comptroller of Public Accountants. They will go so far as to call your income “our money”. Glad my tax dollars pay for your healthcare you mooks.
In the meantime my hourly employees rely on the kindness of the public and the taxpayers in general to fund their healthcare. And I can’t change that until all my competitors do (raising costs = raising prices = bad move in this economy unless all are doing it) but until then, thank you to all you taxpayers for funding the working poor’s needs.