Taxes

Ouch. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, are going after Rafael Borras, President Obama's nominee to be Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Management for mistakes made two years in a row on his tax filing. Collins said:

What concerns me is a pattern of carelessness here. You have been nominated for a job that is enormously complex, and is going to require great managerial experience and great attention to detail. We could spend hours to you talking about the management challenges. If there was just one incident or one form overlooked, I could understand. Anyone can make a mistake. But I'm concerned about a record of significant lapses with regard to your taxes. If there are extenuating circumstances the cmte should be aware of, for example, we had a nominee who was deployed in Iraq at the time he owed some taxes....If there are extenuating circumstances or some justification for this pattern, I need to know it.

Borras responded:

I've filed taxes for over 30 years and had no pattern of making those kinds of mistake. In my 27 years of professional work, there has never been any issue related to attention to detail, anything about my performance that has indicated any level of concern. I have managed successfully very difficult financial situations, I believe with distinction. I have been commended for that. I have never had an investigation that questioned or challenged my financial management....I regret the errors I made in 2006 and 2007.

No matter what you think of Collins' charges or Borras' response, the awkwardness of the whole exchange made me understand more clearly why folks who made even minor errors on their taxes would withdraw from consideration rather than go through this kind of grilling.