The Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA) dished out $14,000 for a speech he gave last year, and reminded the South Dakota Democrat of the fat check he received when the group raised concerns about possible Medicare reforms that would affect the healthcare industry.

In a letter, posted on its Web site, the organization reminded Daschle: "As you may recall from speaking to some of our members during HIDA's 2008 Executive Conference in Miami, where you were the keynote speaker, a competitive bidding program will undermine access to quality care for millions of beneficiaries."

But the consulting (i.e., lobbying) Daschle did for the healthcare industry goes much deeper than the large speaking fees he got from the health-insurance industry, drug companies and other healthcare groups.

As part of his work for law firm Alston & Bird in the past two years, he gave "policy advice" to UnitedHealth Group, an insurance conglomerate that assists the Medicaid program and dispenses advice to drug companies.

Obama wanted Daschle to oversee the development of his healthcare-reform program, but in the end he had become a case study in conflicts of interest that turned into an ethical nightmare for the administration.

The third nominee to run into income tax trouble Tuesday was Nancy Killefer, nominated to be a deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and the administration's chief performance officer. She withdrew her name Tuesday after it came to light that she had mishandled her payroll taxes.

These embarrassing vetting blunders were "really quite stunning for a transition team that has so carefully studied everything that might go wrong," said presidential scholar Stephen Hess at the liberal Brookings Institution.

If any of these tax-evasion cases had broken in a Republican White House, the Democrats would be screaming for a special prosecutor and blocking any vote. The Democrats confirmed Geithner Monday and probably would have confirmed Daschle, too, but he mercifully spared Obama and his party from the bloody Senate battle that would have ensued.

Leona Helmsley, the late New York real-estate diva who went prison for failing to pay her taxes, once famously said, "Only the little people pay taxes." Three high-income tax evaders in a row this week left many people thinking that the Obama Democrats were adopting Helmsley's imperious rule.