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.
The whole article is a hoot. While steadfastly avoiding his child support obligations candidate Walsh, the very model of financial rectitude and responsibility, was able to loan his own campaign $35,000. Seriously!
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.”
He also found time to go on vacation with his girlfriend. In Mexico.
In 2004, Laura Walsh complained in a motion that despite her ex-husband’s claims of poverty, he took a vacation to Mexico with his girlfriend and another to Italy. The following year, he complained in a court filing that his ex-wife mailed him a motion while she knew he was in Nicaragua doing charitable work with one of their children.
In her December filing, Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote, “The apparent availability of large sums of money from either his employment, his family or his campaign has allowed him to live quite a comfortable lifestyle, while at the same time, due to his failure to pay child support or any of his share of the education costs or medical expenses, Laura and his children were denied any of these advantages.”
I’d LOVE to go to Mexico, Italy, and Nicaragua with my girlfriend too, but not if it means stiffing my kid on the child support.
And that’s kind of what’s fascinating to me about this whole story. Yeah, the hypocrisy of the tea bag “get out financial affairs in order” politician is funny. But really gets me is that Walsh seems to think that refusing to pay is a way to fuck with his ex-wife: you can see it in the letters that go back and forth, the claims of poverty, the one-time attempt to claim his wife was mentally ill, etc.
But that’s not who’s on the receiving end of his fuckery: it’s his KIDS who take the hit. They not only suffer from less money in the primary household, they get to watch their father act like a complete and royal jackass to their mother. And yeah, maybe she’s a bitch,, but you know what? You put away your hatred for your ex, because your love for the kids means a lot more than petty vengeance.
And there you have a tea bagger, in a nutshell: driven by nothing more than petty vengeance. That’s what you’ve been seeing play out for the past three years on the right. Petty vengeance and temper tantrums.
Son of Newt! Run away!
For a few years I was in a relationship with a guy who often was a a cad. There were times he lived with friends because he didn’t have a steady job. At the time I knew him, he was working, had his own apartment and was living paycheck to paycheck but he had paychecks. He’d been divorced from his first wife for a more than a decade and his kids were now teenagers. He told them he wouldn’t be able to help with college. BUT, the one thing he did pay every month, even when he wasn’t working steadily, was his child support. He pointedly told me that he might have had disagreements with his ex, but the kids wouldn’t or shouldn’t suffer. He paid for their support, no matter what. As I said, he could be a cad but I had to respect the fact that he felt that obligation keenly and paid it.
I’ll bet the representative often spouts family values crap and likes to think of himself as moral… my friend might not have met the definition of moral but he did follow through on the obligations to his kids.
@woodsider: i lost my job a few weeks back. I had to put it off for a few weeks, but got my support to my ex. And when my UIC was confirmed, the first thing I did was call my lawyer, report my new “income” and ask what I had to pay.
I don’t like my ex at all, but it’s not my son’s fault. This guy Walsh really looks like he’s trying to get back at his wife through his kids. Or maybe he’s just a cheap-ass, deadbeat motherfucker. Neither’s particularly flattering.
Well, this is interesting. Rep. Walsh is my Congressman. Not MY Congressman, mind you – I sure didn’t vote for him.
And yes – he does remind folks of the need for family values, and why can’t the federal government stick to a budget the way families do, blah, blah, blah…
Note that the collective Tea Bag moral compass does not actually point to the north….