A debt is what you owe, and renouncing it doesn’t make it go away:
Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.
“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order.
Walsh starts the video by saying, “President Obama, quit lying. Have you no shame, sir? In three short years, you’ve bankrupted this country.”
Walsh admits he is not wealthy. Some of his financial problems — including losing his Evanston condo to foreclosure — were documented before his out-of-nowhere victory last fall in the 8th Congressional District in Chicago’s north and northwest suburbs. But court documents examined this week by the Chicago Sun-Times during research for a profile on the increasingly visible congressman showed his financial issues also included a nine-year child support battle with his ex-wife.
Before getting elected, he had told Laura Walsh that because he was out of work or between jobs, he could not make child support payments. So she was surprised to read in his congressional campaign disclosures that he was earning enough money to loan his campaign $35,000.
“Joe personally loaned his campaign $35,000, which, given that he failed to make any child support payments to Laura because he ‘had no money’ is surprising,” Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed in December seeking $117,437 in back child support and interest. “Joe has paid himself back at least $14,200 for the loans he gave himself.”
Walsh’s attorneys responded in court filings: “Respondent admits that funds were loaned to his campaign fund. . . . Respondent admits that the campaign fund has repaid certain loans.”
I don’t watch cable news/opinion anymore, so I missed Walsh’s performance. His approach is trickling down to the local level, though. As a leader of the Tea Party, his words must have weight. My husband attended one of those small town “business” forums yesterday, and a Republican county commissioner opened the event with a joke comparing Obama to Pinocchio. So much for the mythical Chamber of Commerce Republicans that exist only in the imagination of national pundits. My husband said the joke fell flat. Most people were confused rather than amused. Of course, the people in that room probably didn’t watch the “viral video” of the Tea Party star, so they may have wondered why a county commissioner opened a non-partisan community event by calling the President a liar.
Real life is different than cable tv or reality shows.
Maybe after today, when the Tea Party members get their asses in line, follow orders, and vote to pass Boehner’s bill we can all stop pretending they are a separate and distinct political movement and instead call them what they are: the very worst of the Republican Party. The dregs. The Tea Party is what’s left after the folks who had any interest in responsible governance, public service or rational thought left the Republican Party.
dr. bloor
If truth in advertising laws had any teeth, it would be the “Entitled, Infantile White People Who Want Their Free Lunch, Dammit” Party.
Can you imagine being this slimesucker’s lawyer? Geez.
Nemesis
The far right wing of the gop (baggers) will fall in line today to pass the Orange Foolius plan. Bank dat.
The far right wings job all along was to drive the plan further right, giving everyone involved a reason to “take what they could get”.
Disgusting. Shit sandwich to follow.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
O’ Donell and Norquist on joe
beltane
What a coincidence. My husband’s brother is also a fundie teabagger, deadbeat dad, and all-around scumbag of the worst order. Needless, to say, this person is no longer a part of our lives. It must be a feature, not a bug, with these people, as I’ve noticed that one’s level personal irresponsibility rises in direct proportion with their level of conservatism.
And now the lowest of our nation’s low-lives are treating their country they way they treat their family and neighbors. Goddess help us.
jon
It’s an austerity plan, and he’s not a hypocrite because he’s willing to do it to the women and children from his own family, too. Principles, baby. Principles.
Kay
He’s been disputing paying child support for nine years. It’s gone on so long, two of his children grew up, and aged out of the system. The Congressional gig he landed is his first steady job since he got divorced.
Luckily, his ex-wife is and was steadily employed, so I imagine the children’s financial needs were met while he was “working” as a conservative activist.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
HA, he was a fucking community organizer!
“He began his career working with the Jobs for Youth program in the inner-city Chicago area, teaching high school dropouts basic academic and job skills. He has taught American government and American history at the Oakton Community College.”
Cat Lady
Some commenter on GOS skipped out on a meal once so both sides do it.
beltane
@Kay: My nieces were not so fortunate, as their mother is a low-wage, service sector worker. Brother-in-law actually trotted out the phrase “It’s up to them if they sink or swim.” These people are truly pathological.
Morbo
NPR had this fuckface on this morning. As Dean Baker says it would’ve been useful for NPR to have told its listeners this information.
beltane
@efgoldman: No, that was Joe Wilson, douchebag from South Carolina. It’s hard to keep the assholes straight these days.
R-Jud
@efgoldman: That was Joe Wilson– Joe Walsh hadn’t been elected yet.
ETA: GAH, too slow. Anyway, the reason I remember is because I’ve got an uncle who happens to be named Joe Wilson, and he’s really sick of having people yell “YOU LIE!” at him.
A Mom Anon
It almost sounds like he studiously avoided employment as an excuse not to pay child support. Interesting now that the kids are grown he has a paid gig,in the government he hates.
Ben Cisco
Well, we know why they’re hell-bent on default – they seem to be familiar with the process.
__
The cognitive dissonance, it BURNNNNSSSSS.
kansi
@efgoldman:
Walsh has a YouTube video out in which he opens by calling on the President to “stop lying.” He is not the “You Lie” congressman. Seems the GOP has plenty of name callers to rely on.
kay
Personal responsibility! Family first! Imagine his ex-wife watching national media slobbering all over these grifters, and calling them a “movement”. She went to his campaign finance reports, and that’s the basis of the newest motion.
Once Boehner slaps them into line, AGAIN, it’s going to be harder to maintain this national media fantasy that they are anything other than the very dregs of the GOP, sloppily rebranded and marketed.
kay
If you want actual news on the Tea Party congress members, you have to go to local news. The national media did no due diligence at all when they ran. None. They were too busy creating a cottage industry of pundits who rely on analyzing the “Tea Party” to make their mortgage payments. We now have Tea Party experts!
It’s win-win. Except for the people in this district. They lost.
B W Smith
As a family law paralegal for many years, I can tell you this guy meets the profile of every dead beat dad I’ve had the displeasure of knowing. Arrogant, cocky, and filled with entitlement, they are sure they can intimidate their way out of every situation. And, yes, compromise to them means bullying their way to get exactly what they want. They are good at being charming and acting contrite but it’s just part of their game. The profile explains to me one more reason why I had a visceral response to this guy. I’ve met him a thousand times in the guise of others.
beltane
@kay: “The wretched refuse of humanity, yearning to freeload.”
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
kay
Paul Broun, the moron rep in my district, was teaparty stupid before it existed.
arguingwithsignposts
Something doesn’t add up here. Those figures are 2X poverty level for a single person. Was he crashing on someone’s couch?
El Cid
__
They’re the Bircher, neo-Confederate, and Robber Baron era-worshiping right which has always been there, the current movement reflecting some of its origins in the Southern segregationist Democrats.
The prior used to be shunned when the Republican party base was the Northeast and Midwest, but were seen as valuable shock troops from the 1990s on, with a farther and farther right core post-9/11, and then obviously set full right-freak after the Kenyonesian took over.
They were the product of a coalition of super-rich inherited wealth far-right, big business elite radicals, and Republican party reactionary Robber Baron right (and all including the think tank and pressure organizations which are the funded servants of the foregoing).
A lot of people know that this is what they’re saying by the moniker “Tea Party”, but that isn’t how it’s used. It isn’t portrayed as a newer, bigger role for that classic ultra-right coalition, but as some completely new phenomenon.
Ash Can
A Tea Party star refusing to support his family and hiding income to avoid having to pay child support. No one could have predicted…
JPL
Raven, Our representatives give doctors a poor name. I know the study of anatomy is different than the study of economics, but gee you would think they could add.
Lawnguylander
Being obliged to take care of your own kids is theft.
arguingwithsignposts
@Ash Can: hoocoodanode?
J.D. Rhoades
I’m really sorry to hear this. I loved his work with the Eagles.
kay
The local situation is interesting, because a lot of our current GOP county commissioners ran in a bad year for Republicans. They’re all Republicans, but they ran as “conservatives” or “independents”, because…those were bad years to be a Republican in Ohio- 2006 to 2009, thereabouts. There’s some dismay and buyer’s remorse because they’ve all magically morphed into Tea Partiers. It’s not a good political tactic, I don’t think. What plays on cable tv doesn’t play when they’re in charge of snow removal and local ordinances. No one is interested in “viral videos” or whatever today’s Tea Party chain email says. It just sounds discordant and oddly out of touch with reality.
BruinKid
It’s all about the conservative victimization, baby!
shortstop
I knew he’d defaulted on the single ARM in America that didn’t go to an unworthy black person, and I knew he didn’t pay his taxes, and I knew he was a failed “venture capitalist,” but this deadbeat dad crap really makes me sick. And very, very angry.
As we have watched the “maturation” of the teabagging movement, it’s become clear that all the things we thought were their true, root motivators — racism, inability to deal with change, unwillingness to admit past enthusiastic support for the Bush administration that results in a relabeling of themselves — are just parts of the larger dysfunction. These are people who quite simply want what they want when they want it and don’t want to do anything they don’t want to do, ever. They will shriek piously for the government to show the responsibility and accountability that they themselves constantly lie, spin and sneak around to avoid.
We know them. We’ve always known them. They are the kid no one would play with in the neighborhood because he bullied everyone else and screamed bloody murder about his victimization when someone pushed back. They’re the coworker everyone hates because she won’t do her job but loudly demands credit for everyone else’s work — which she constantly undermines behind the scenes. They’re the people who abuse their partners and feel true amazement that they’re being castigated for doing something the other person obviously made them do.
Their sense of victimization is real, not an act, because there’s nothing straight and true about them. They are bent, weaselly, shifty-eyed, always looking for what they perceive to be the advantage while whining loudly about how others are failing them.
Normal two-year-olds have this level of self — wanting everything their way and not yet truly understanding or caring how their actions affect the community around them. Emotionally, the tea party is a band of fucking two-year-olds. And they’re on the rampage in the global economy, without effective parents who can teach them concepts like “share” and “fair” and the golden rule.
nitpicker
He can’t be blamed if his child support doesn’t fit underneath his personal debt ceiling.
El Cid
Children are parasites who need to be made to earn their way in the Free Market.
jinxtigr
This guy sucks!
singfoom
Ah, blatant rank hypocrisy. Thy name is politician. If only we could somehow transmute hypocrisy into greenbacks, it would only take several of our dear elected officials to plug the deficit.
Are there any left in our government with a sense of right and wrong (independent of their declared Christian morality while they act most un-Christianlike) and honor?
I’d like to believe we can vote idiots like this out and install people who actually care about their constituents and the rest of the country.
But then, the problem is the electorate. Should I despair or despise?
Punchy
I’m quite certain this information will be used liberally (pun intended) in the next election’s commercial ads.
kansi
@singfoom:
Why choose when you can have it all?
Kathy in St. Louis
Wonder who he was banging that broke up the marriage? I am sincerely glad that he doesn’t want to burden his “kids with more debt”, but really doesn’t care if they eat, day to day, or not. Typical slimeball politician.
JPL
On CBS Early Show, Walsh tried to explain that not raising the debt limit wouldn’t cause a default. Maybe he used the same explanation to the judge. Hey judge just because I didn’t pay child support doesn’t mean I didn’t pay child support.
Walsh also said he was undecided about the Boehner bill.
mk3872
Can we now start calling Tea Partiers, DEADBEATS, since they refuse to pay the bills of the United States of America ??
Face
To his credit, he does play a pretty mean guitar.
Jeffro
MK3872 @ 40: there’s a great article up at Salon.com asking for that very same thing
I have always made a point in conversations to call the Tea Party the Republican Tea Party. “Deadbeat Party” works pretty well for me going forward, too.
kay
And the principled libertarians at the Club For Growth double down on Walsh:
4tehlulz
I hereby nominate “Fuck and Run Conservatism” as the name for this new ideology.
shortstop
Interesting. Bill Foster’s talking about running again in the 14th. I have to take a good look at those new borders to get any idea of whether he could beat Walsh if Walsh ousts Hultgren in the primary. Illinois has open primaries, so it’s a little hard to predict that one.
If the borders hadn’t changed, think a Foster-Hultgren second matchup could have gone either way but that Foster would take Walsh, especially after this cascade of personal revelations and Walsh’s role in the debt ceiling debacle. Need to see what that district looks like now, though.
Interesting aside: My parents live in that district and my mom, a recovering lifelong Republican, spent a lot of time on the phone for Foster this past fall. When the GOP loses the old Goldwater girls, they lose ’em hard.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@J.D. Rhoades: actually that Joe Walsh was better with the James Gang, but then I’m kinda cranky this week.
Ash Can
@kay: Maybe that’s because, at a town hall meeting a few months ago, Hultgren agreed that big corporations shouldn’t be allowed to shirk their tax burdens. I can’t imagine the Club for Growth being happy with an attitude like that.
Ash Can
@shortstop: Walsh’s district actually went for Obama in 2008, so I agree that, redistricting or not, all the revelations about Walsh being a slacker, deadbeat, and negligent parent can’t possibly do him any favors.
Just look at Hillary Clinton, e.g. :)
kay
Great! Purge the GOP bench of anyone who makes sense. Leaving a pure distilled core of grifters, crooks and thieves.
Not that Hultgren is a genius. I love how he promised to look into the federal tax code, right after he spouts some nonsense about excessive “regulation”.
That’s not happening. The tax code is TOO LONG to READ. When my son was really little and frustrated with homework he used to say “it’s IM-POSSIBLE!”. Thankfully, he dropped that nonsense at SEVEN years old, so is gainfully employed. Conservatives would celebrate his intransigence.
shortstop
Ash:
Cool; did it? I don’t know much about the 8th. This is getting good.
kay: Hultgren is far from a genius, and the old 14th was far from bright red, especially at the eastern end. I think Cook’s had it at R+1 or 2.
Lots to watch.
catclub
Shortstop @ 45 “this cascade of personal revelations and Walsh’s role in the debt ceiling debacle.”
I suspect only the deadbeat dad part will harm him in the election. The debt ceiling debacle will be ancient history in November 2012.
HRA
I am on a tight schedule here today. Will read comments later on this evening. Most of all I wanted to thank Kay for bringing this to light. Walsh has been all over the media these past days and made me curious about how, why and when Chicago would elect a Tea Party candidate.
Thanks again Kay. Off to the office picnic now.
Bruce S
The thing that’s weird about this is that Walsh seems to crave the spotlight – he’s a regular on MSNBC talking heads, O’Donnell, Ed, etc. He also happens to be one of the best spokespeople the Tea Party has – he’s affable, acts like he’s listening to questions and counterpoints, and never seems shrill or butt-stupid in his TeeVee persona (at least not on the surface.) I can’t fathom how folks who are this deep in their own shit can go public with their self-righteous, ill-informed BS. It’s the Gingrich pathology…a kind of perverse self-confidence that’s oblivious to reality.
shortstop
Not the city of Chicago. His district starts in the northwest suburbs and heads out to the Chain of Lakes area.
Nutella
@A Mom Anon:
Avoiding documented employment is a common tactic of the really dedicated child support deadbeats. The only good thing about Walsh getting into Congress is that his salary there is enough to cover his back child support.
The latest filing by his ex-wife notes that while he was claiming a tiny income on his tax forms and support documents somehow he came up with $35k to lend to his own campaign. The IRS may be interested to hear that.
kay
Oh, I’m not ruling out a cable news slot of his own. I’m sure he could get hired, no matter what he does.
They all had Joseph M. “Joe” Arpaio on as an expert on immigration and law enforcement, and he’s a criminal and a sadist. They thought he was charming, if a little eccentric, and had some very valid and worthwhile views on policy. Both sides. The criminal sadist view deserves exactly the same exposure as any other.
Walsh will be the expert on child support, like Orly was the expert on state documentation of birth. He’ll argue that child support is a “taking” and one or another group of Right wing hacks will take that to the Supreme Court.
I don’t rule out anything, really. Grifters gotta grift, as the saying around here goes.
Chris
What do you call it when a guy runs out of a restaurant just as the bill arrives? “Dine and dash”? No, I think “Tea Party Republican” fits better.
My Truth Hurts
To be fair, that money was appropriated from his previous martial status. His current marital status has taken a hard line on spending.
DougL
I live in Walsh’s (formerly Melissa Bean’s) congressional district (IL-8). F**king 291 votes.
I was recently at a rodeo in Wauconda (my wife is a country girl from Galena – she’s a big horse nut). I didn’t recognize him at the time, but Joe Walsh made a rather unceremonious entry into the grandstands. About halfway down the stretch of stands, someone in the crowd yelled something (I wasn’t paying close attention at the time. I just thought it was just a couple of average guys recognizing each other and shouting out to each other.) I recalled that as he passed, his response was “Hell, NO!”
It wasn’t until later that I discovered that he’s part of the “Hell No” caucus, at which point it seemed likely that the friend in the stands was probably a plant and the “Hell, NO!” shout was probably supposed to be some sort of rallying cry to get the crowd worked up. Unfortunately (for him), the response was next to non-existent.
Also, at some point in the rodeo, he was announced as the rodeo’s grand marshall and he rode out to do a loop in the the arena standing in the back of a pickup truck greeting the crowd. FWIW, the crowd response was rather polite, if unenthusiastic and lukewarm.
Carl Nyberg
Bill Foster is running in the newly created IL-11 district which is approximately Joliet and Aurora.
Walsh and Hultgren are running in an ex-urban district.
I suspect Rep. Jack Franks (D) is waiting in the weeds for Hultgren and Walsh to got super negative on each other. Franks is a tough SOB at campaigning.
While the district leans Republican, so does Franks’ state rep district.
Ken
Well, here’s “several children left behind” for you. I’m sure the kids will have endearing memories of their father.
shortstop
Thanks, Carl! I took a close look at the map — so the 11th (interesting shape!) looks like it will be okay for Foster, far better than the old 14th was. I was out of the country when he announced and just hadn’t picked up on it since.
I don’t know much about Franks and appreciate the info. Should be interesting; agree that Hultgren and Walsh are going to go crazy on each other.
HRA
shortstop @54
Thanks for the info on where Walsh’s district is in Illinois.
Anyone who won’t support their kids is pond scum.
HyperIon
Your post is better that DougJ’s.
Color me unsurprised.
travis
My dad was one of those types and he was good at not ever appearing to be employed but still getting money to live from sympathetic men who employed him, paying him under the table. I have no doubt that this fuckstain has perfected the same skills, though losing his condo proves he’s not that good at making the hidden money to stay housed. I’m sure he shares the strong sense of victimization that my dad had as well. It’s not the fault of the worthless fuck who refuses to care for his family, it’s the fault of the government, the lawyers, the ex wife, negros, mexicans and fucking hippies. On the plus side, I got a front row ticket to “conservative value’s” early on, so I had no illusions that conservatives had any real knowledge of right or wrong. Right is what they want to be right, wrong is everyone else.
shortstop
Okay, I don’t get this. I understand that divorces and all relationships can end badly and that there are too many men who think that women in the aggregate are evil bitches out to take advantage of men, just as there are too many women who think that men as a whole are evil bastards out to take advantage of women. But why are there so many folks who will look the other way when children are not getting taken care of and worse, actually help people screw over their children? WTF is wrong with these people?