In trying to defeat the nomination of Dr. Mehmet Oz to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Senate Democrats suddenly rediscovered an issue they just so happened to “forget” for the past four years.

Apart from wondering whether Obamacare covers this type of amnesia, the situational ethic shows why Washington rightly has such a bad name.

Tax Issues

Here’s the short version of the story surrounding Dr. Oz:

[Oz] may have significantly underpaid his Medicare and Social Security taxes from 2021 to 2023, according to a … memo created by Democratic staff on the Senate Finance Committee. … The document from Democratic staff argued that Oz, a former cardiac surgeon, may have “significantly underpaid” his Social Security and Medicare taxes for those years. …

The staff memo said from 2021 to 2023 Oz held an interest in Oz Property Holdings LLC, which includes the media production company that ran his successful television show. Oz believed he was not liable for income or Medicare and Social Security taxes on certain income from that LLC, the memo said, adding that: “He avoided hundreds of thousands of dollars in Social Security and Medicare taxes in the years reviewed.”

If any of this sounds more than a little bit familiar, that’s because I have previously outlined a similar situation in these pages, featuring someone Finance Committee Democrats know well: Joe Biden.

After leaving the vice presidency in 2017, Biden and his wife, Jill, funneled their book and speech income through two S-corporations, CelticCapri Corporation and Giacoppa Corporation. By characterizing over $13.5 million of this income as profits from these corporations rather than taxable wages, the Bidens avoided paying over $500,000 in Medicare and Social Security taxes. However, tax experts interviewed by The Wall Street Journal in 2019 called the Bidens’ actions “pretty aggressive,” and said they were done for no reason other than to circumvent Medicare taxes.

After spending the past four years ignoring Biden’s “aggressive” tax maneuvers, suddenly Democrats awakened from their slumber and decided one of President Trump’s nominees deserved to be defeated for using similar tactics. Imagine that!

Joe Biden’s Lickspittles

With this newfound interest in tax avoidance, I emailed staff for Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., as well as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has also attacked Oz’s tax affairs. My questions were simple: Now that the senators have “criticized Dr. Oz for much the same maneuvers that Joe and Jill Biden utilized,” do they “plan to write to President Biden asking him to pay the Medicare and Social Security taxes he and his wife failed to pay?” Likewise, would either “write to the IRS asking why they did not pursue a repayment of Mr. Biden’s taxes, which the [liberal] Tax Policy Center suggested that the House Ways and Means Committee should do?”

Wouldn’t you know it, neither senator’s communications team responded to my request for comment. Funny that.

At a time when Democrats are trying to foment outrage about how Republican elected officials are “enabling Donald Trump,” they just revealed how they spent the past four years enabling Joe Biden. Democrats — not to mention the corporate media — looked the other way regarding his mental decline and kept their mouths shut about his questionable taxes to boot. I don’t accept for one second that people like Warren, to say nothing of her staff, are so stupid that they didn’t know about Biden’s tax machinations.

There’s another irony: The publication that ran with the Dr. Oz story was none other than Politico. And of course Politico mentioned nothing of the fact that the tax controversy Democrats were peddling regarding Dr. Oz was much the same one Democrats spent the past four years ignoring when it came to the Bidens. Politico ignored that angle because Politico spent the past four years ignoring Joe Biden’s taxes right along with congressional Democrats. Again, funny that.

D.C. Hypocrisy Is D.C. Corruption

Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., brought up a similar example of “situational ethics” recently when she pointed out Democrats’ hypocrisy on the filibuster. The party wanted to abolish the procedural hurdle when Biden and Democrats had unified control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, but wanted to use it to shut the federal government down now that Republicans control the elected branches of Washington.

It’s this kind of flip-flopping that makes Americans, including this one, so cynical about Washington. Politicians of both parties do it (although most Senate Republicans have remained surprisingly consistent when it comes to preserving the filibuster). But they beclown themselves while doing so and pervert their office in the process. In case anyone had forgotten, elected officials take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution — not their party nor the president, whoever that president is.

I haven’t seen Dr. Oz’s tax returns, which aren’t public. If he underpaid his taxes, he should of course be held accountable for his actions. The same goes for Joe Biden, and yes, for Donald Trump. But I won’t take any lectures on tax compliance from a group of politicians that just spent the past four years enabling Biden’s graft. If you want credibility the next time something like this comes up, have the guts to stand up to your own party before criticizing the opposition.