Audit them all and make the results public

Tom Daschle prudently withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services, but that’s not the most important tax story on Washington politicians, influence peddlers and lobbyists. People typically believe big guys in this town are treated one way and little guys another, usually far more harshly.

Too often, those people are absolutely right.

Daschle was only the most visible of President Barack Obama’s nominees with serious tax problems. Nancy Killefer was going to be Obama’s “performance czar” until we found out she forgot to pay payroll taxes on her household help. And Timothy Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in taxes over a four-year period but still managed to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel is up to his eyeballs in tax problems because he failed to report income from a Caribbean vacation home and a New York apartment complex he owns. He is predicting, however, that the House Ethics Committee will clear him. No surprise there.

Slapping ever-stricter ethics and financial disclosure regulations is the usual fix favored by Washington movers and shakers, and no wonder. Congressional financial disclosure forms are monuments to vacuity, allowing Members to “report” income by categories of amounts.

Thanks to groups like the Sunlight Foundation and OpenSecrets.org, it’s not nearly so difficult to find those forms now, but they remain needlessly opague. What we do know for sure is that a bunch of people in Congress leave much wealthier than they were when they got here.

A lot of people get rich soon after leaving Congress, too. Washington is running over with formers – folks who were once senators, congressmen, high-level executive branch appointees or key congressional committee or leadership staffers - who use their contacts, experience and access to influence public policy decisions on behalf of corporate clients who pay them millions......