Geithner should resign, too

Now that Barack Obama has admitted that he "screwed up" with regard to his Tom Daschle nomination, he needs to complete the picture by getting Timothy Geithner to resign as treasury secretary. To allow Mr. Geithner to remain in this position would place a cloud over the president's economic policies, in which every proposal Mr. Geithner makes would be cast in the light of someone who failed to follow the rules himself. As a result, the cloud over Geithner would also encircle Obama as long as Geithner is around. Supposedly Geithner's tax evasion was overlooked in his Senate confirmation because of his outstanding and unique qualifications for the job of Treasury Secretary. It would seem to me that if someone violated one of most important rules of the federal department in charge of administering the tax code (i.e., pay your taxes), this should automatically disqualify that person from running the department. The idea that somehow Tim Geithner holds a monopoly on the expertise necessary to run the treasury department is an insult to the many economic experts in this country who do pay their taxes and to those regular folks like us who scrupulously pore over our tax returns every year to be as certain as possible that we didn't make even the smallest mistake. Besides, the universal praise for Mr. Geithner by the same Wall Street community that got our country into this economic mess made me suspicious of him from the outset of his nomination.

Daniel Roos

Glen Ellyn