White House Performance Officer Nominee Nancy Killefer Withdraws Candidacy Over Tax Questions
By RICHARD SISK
Daily News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination as chief White House bean-counter Tuesday to avoid a brewing controversy over her taxes and household help.
Killefer, 55, a senior director for the management consultant firm McKinsey & Co., had been slated to be the first chief performance officer at the White House, in charge of line-by-line budget oversight of the vast federal bureaucracy.
Killefer is the second of President Obama's nominees to withdraw amid tax or ethic woes, despite Team Obama's boats of a vaunted vetting process. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson dropped out as Commerce Secretary amid a federal pay-to-play probe in his home state.
And she's the third nominee Killefer with a significant tax troubles.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the choice for Health and Human Services Secretary, had each been slammed for failing to pay taxes.
Geithner did not pay social security taxes earlier this decade when he worked at the International Monetary Fund, and Daschle failed to pony up taxes on imputed income for receiving a car and driver. Both recently paid back the taxes – and penalties.
Killefer faced a $900 lien in 2005 on her home for not paying taxes on household help.
In her letter to Obama withdrawing her nomination, Killefer wrote, “I recognize that your agenda and the duties facing your Chief Performance Officer are urgent.
"I have also come to realize in the current environment that my personal tax issue of D.C. Unemployment tax could be used to create exactly the kind of distraction and delay those duties must avoid. Because of this I must reluctantly ask you to withdraw my name from consideration," she added.
The White House initially was mum on what other problems she may have faced.
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