texas. what are the odds that rex tillerson has a zoe baird problem, what are the odds that he always found nannies and gardeners and domestic help in texas who were american citizens or properly-documented foreign workers? what are the odds that rex tillerson paid social security taxes on workers in his home before zoe baird taught the country that you had to do that? as i said, most people had no idea there was anything wrong with paying domestic workers with just cash. most people had no idea you were supposed to pay social security taxes for domestic workers. the senate finance committee went to work immediately to make it easier for people to pay those social security taxes for domestic workers, to create a simpler form to fill out. because prior to that, no one even on the tax-writing committee even realized that there was a problem. what are the odds that rex tillerson realized that.
emerged. that s what it s called, the zoe baird problem. it is named after the nominee who first got in trouble for something that truly thousands of nominees before her were guilty of. not paying social security taxes for domestic help. in this case, a nanny. most americans had no idea you were supposed to pay social security taxes for nannies and people working in your home. zoe baird was a 40-year-old corporate lawyer who bill clinton had nominated, she employed a nanny who was not in the country legally but whom zoe baird said was sponsoring for legal status. she believed that because she was sponsoring the woman for legal status that it was legal to employee her while she was sponsoring her. she was wrong about that. zoe baird also believed that because the woman did not yet
when washington least expects it. i organize dozens of confirmation hearings and most of them went smoothly, but you never know. in 1993, we walked into a hearing room to discover that every seat in the hearing room, audience seat, every seat, had been covered with a piece of paper that claimed the cabinet nominee who would testify that day was gay. luckily, washington had evolved to the point where that didn t slow down the confirmation process for that nominee. but that same week there was an explosion in the senate confirmation process, unlike anything we had ever seen, and it changed everything. for every single nominee who has come before the senate since that week. h that is when from out of nowhere, the zoe baird problem
no one thought it would be a problem. orrin hatch, the senior republican on the committee said it seemed like an honest mistake to him. i think was clearly a mistake. i choose to accept your explanation that it was an honest mistake, although you knew that it was a violation. that was the first day of zoe baird s confirmation hearing. joe biden was the chairman of the committee. joe biden seemed to take the immigration violation more seriously than some republicans did, but he told the new york times, this is not a deal breaker. this is not anything that should keep her from being attorney general. that s what all the pros believed. smooth sailing, no problem on the confirmation. until senators phones started ringing after that first confirmation hearing and the senate started turning against zoe baird. there were enough democrats in the senate then to get her to
taxes for domestic workers. the senate finance committee went to work immediately to make it easier for people to pay those social security taxes for domestic workers, to create a simpler form to fill out. because prior to that, no one even on the tax-writing committee even realized that there was a problem. what are the odds that rex tillerson realized that. realized that before tax-writing senators realized it, realized that the law in this area needed to be complied with of about the zoe baird problem came to washington. anything can happen in confirmation hearings. the conventional wisdom now is that rex tillerson will probably be confirmed. but he is already facing more resistance than zoe baird faced when her confirmation process began. the fbi background check on rex tillerson may be the most complex background check that the fbi has ever had to conduct