(Adds details.) By Martin Vaughan Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Tuesday that "serious" errors made by Timothy Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary, shouldn't disqualify him from the post.
Baucus said he hopes the Senate will still be able to confirm Geithner, currently president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, by the time Obama takes office on Jan. 20.
Senate Finance Committee members held a closed-door meeting Tuesday to discuss revelations that Geithner employed a housekeeper whose immigration papers had expired, and that he failed to pay self-employment taxes on income he earned as an independent contractor with the International Monetary Fund.
According to a report released Tuesday by the Finance Committee, Geithner recently paid $34,023 in Social Security and Medicare to the IRS, which he had failed to pay during the period of 2001-2004 when he was employed at the IMF. Interest on those amounts totaled $8,769, for a total of $42,702.
The Senate report also said that Geithner employed the housekeeper for three-and-a-half months in 2005 after her work papers had expired, during which time she wasn't legally employable in the U.S.
"I believe that these errors, although serious, do not rise to the level of disqualification," Baucus told reporters after the meeting. Geithner met with the committee in a Senate office building Tuesday to address the revelations.
Other senators were tight-lipped while leaving the meeting. The panel's senior Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., steadfastly refused to comment on Geithner's status.
A committee aide said Obama transition-team officials brought the two issues to the attention of the committee in early December. Geithner is still amending his tax returns to deal with the underpayment of self-employment taxes, the aide said.
-By Martin Vaughan, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9244; martin.vaughan@dowjones.com
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Publié le 13 janvier 2009 Copyright © 2009 Dowjones