ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST?:

Labor Nominee's Hearing Off as Husband's Tax Liens Surface (Michael A. Fletcher, 2/06/09, Washington Post)

A Senate committee yesterday abruptly called off a session to consider President Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) to be labor secretary after learning that her husband had paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens, some on file as long as 16 years.

Solis's confirmation vote before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had already been delayed for weeks by questions over her role as unpaid treasurer of a pro-labor organization and her support of a hotly contested measure that would make it easier for workers to organize unions. [...]

Tax difficulties had already caused problems for three of Obama's top nominees, causing two of them -- Thomas A. Daschle, Obama's choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, and Nancy Killefer, who was to be chief performance officer -- to withdraw.

No new date has been set for the committee to consider Solis's nomination.

One of the benefits of killing the Solis nomination is that it would increase pressure on the UR to make Sonia Sotomayor his first Supreme Court pick, as good a result as the Right can hope for.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2009 6:15 AM