And the hits just keep on coming...

And you thought it couldn't get any worse: Now it turns out that thirteen companies who received Federal bailout money are tax deadbeats too:

At least 13 companies receiving billions of dollars in bailout money owe a total of more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes, a key lawmaker said Thursday.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing the federal bailout, said two companies owe more than $100 million apiece.

"This is shameful. It is a disgrace," said Lewis. "We are going to get to the bottom of what is going on here."

The House Ways and Means subcommittee on oversight discovered the unpaid taxes in a review of tax records from 23 companies receiving the most money, Lewis said as he opened a hearing on the issue.

The committee said it could not legally release the names of the companies owing taxes. It said one recipient of bailout money had almost $113 million in unpaid federal income taxes from 2005 and 2006. A second recipient owed almost $102 million dating to before 2004. Another was behind $1.1 million in federal income taxes and $223,000 in federal employment taxes.

"If we looked at all 470 recipients, how much would they owe?" Lewis asked.

Lewis said the panel plans to review tax records from other firms receiving federal money, but he was unsure if it would look at every one of them.

"We're not done," he said.

Banks and other companies receiving federal money were required to sign contracts stating they had no unpaid taxes, Lewis said. But he said the Treasury Department did not ask them to turn over their tax records.

The article doesn't say which administration's Treasury department decided not to demand tax records, but at this point it doesn't matter, because it's clear that Tim Geithner is committed to taking care of his own, and his own are the very Wall Street guys who caused this mess. And Barack Obama doesn't get a free pass either. He's the one who hired this guy, he's the one who keeps him, and he's the one who keeps guys like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Nouriel Roubini out on the sidelines while simultaneously handing the Republicans, who for the last twenty-eight years have been Wall Street's BFFs, a giant honking populist cover, however bogus it may be.

Then we have the symbolism of Citibank deciding that its CEO Vikram Pandit, who ran one of the biggest banks in the world nearly into the ground, simply must have a new $10 million executive suite -- that this is the best expenditure of $45 billion of taxpayer money. These people don't have a clue. And they aren't about to get a clue; not as long as Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke keep throwing cash at them and demanding absolutely no accountability.

Last night Barack Obama showed on The Tonight Show that he does understand what's going on. But there's only so long that he's going to be able to talk about "fixing the banks" while "the bankers" are continuing to do nothing with their bailout money but stuffing their pockets.