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McCaskill's Tax Troubles Highlight Hypocrisy of "Pay Your Taxes" Comment

February 5, 2009

Jefferson City – With three of President Obama’s top appointees exposed for not paying their taxes, Claire McCaskill has chimed in with one of her most hypocritical rants to date. McCaskill, who Roll Call magazine ranks as one of the richest members of the U.S. Senate, informed MSNBC earlier this week, “For anybody watching this show, if you ever think you’re going to be in government, please pay your taxes. Pay them now.”

Here are the facts about McCaskill’s tax problems, which, by her newfound standard, would seemingly disqualify her from government service:

McCaskill has repeatedly refused requests to release family tax returns, which would shed light on the matrix of government subsidized business dealings (i.e. government subsidized housing, tax credit brokering, nursing homes, etc.) that have made her one of the richest members of the U.S. Senate.
If McCaskill actually abided by her MSNBC rhetoric, her goal of becoming a career politician would have gone unrealized due to a federal tax lien and an embarrassing incident in 1994 in which Camden County published a notice to auction McCaskill’s lakeside condo due to her failure to pay taxes on it.
McCaskill, who told MSNBC “there’s a lot of tax money out there that we need to be collecting”, has been dodging questions about her family’s offshore tax shelter, headquartered in Bermuda, for years. In an October 2006 Kansas City Star story that focused on McCaskill tax shelter, a D.C. watchdog group offered this view: “It’s all about avoiding taxes,” said Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington watchdog group. ‘That’s the whole point of them.”

“Apparently, Claire McCaskill is not interested in practicing what she preaches when it comes to tax problems,” said Tina Hervey. “Timothy Giethner, Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer have proven that failing to pay taxes is not grounds for disqualification from government service in the eyes of the Obama administration. Maybe that explains why McCaskill has turned out to be one of Obama’s most loyal surrogates.”