In heat of election it was official policy not random error
By Howard Rich
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. Last weeks startling acknowledgement by senior staff at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the agencys discriminatory practices against limited government groups is indeed chilling and thuggish as a pair of moderate U.S. Senators have suggested.
But its much more than that. In fact its unlikely our nations capital has seen anything this sinister since Richard
Nixon and his infamous Enemies List and we can only hope the ensuing cacophony of revulsion is just the beginning of a sustained movement to expose similar overreaches across our Orwellian federal government.
Just when it appeared Washington D.C. had become impervious to a full-blown political scandal along comes a seismic revelation
jarring Americans of all ideological moorings one thats placed one of the most feared (and fastest-growing) independent government agencies squarely on the hot seat.
What do we know so far? During a question and answer session last week following an American Bar Association seminar IRS tax-exempt chief Lois Lerner
acknowledged line people in Cincinnati Ohio had used names like Tea Party or Patriots as criteria for selecting tax-exempt applications for further scrutiny.
Of course this stunning confession galling enough on its own merit was
incomplete and misleading.
For starters the IRS Cincinnati office is the central location for all tax-exempt application evaluations meaning the discrimination that took place there wasnt an isolated dumb incident by some random field office as The Washington Post concisely
noted.
In other words this was no error: It was official policy which directly contradicts testimony previously provided by the agencys leadership to Congressional investigators. Not only that the discrimination against limited government supporters was much broader than the agency acknowledged.
According to a forthcoming investigative report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) advance excerpts of which were obtained
by Reuters the IRS also targeted groups which addressed:
- Government spending Government debt or taxes;
- Education of the public via advocacy/ lobbying to make America a better place to live;
- and Statements … (that) criticize how the country is being run.
Furthermore agency leadership was made aware of the discrimination nearly two years ago and said nothing and clearly had no plans to alert the public to what happened. Additionally there was no internal accountability for the
discriminatory practices and the agencys belated response appears to have been to apply the same scrutiny to a broader network of politically active organizations as if additional wrongs might somehow make things right.
How serious is this situation? Deathly: In fact one of the
articles of impeachment against former U.S. President Richard Nixon involved abusing the IRS for political purposes. Specifically the Nixon administration was accused of violating the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens by causing income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.
Thats exactly what happened here which is no doubt why initial reaction of the administration of
Barack Obama to this scandal wasnt to apologize or demand an investigation but instead to try and pin the blame for the fiasco on the previous administration.
The great unmasking of the IRS comes as the agency is growing by leaps and bounds in anticipation of imposing Obamacares nearly two dozen new tax hikes while also expanding the scope of information it seeks from American businesses and taxpayers. It also comes as the agency is set to receive an additional $1 billion in taxpayer funded in Obamas FY 2014 budget one year after it received a $639 million funding increase.
In both cases the lions share of the new money went to expanded enforcement.
Ironically the agency bragged in its
FY 2013 proposal about its continued commitment to improving tax compliance through the balance of quality taxpayer service with fair enforcement of the tax laws.
Fair enforcement? Not if youre a supporter of limited government apparently.
The IRS scandal is proof positive that ostensibly independent government bureaucracies are routinely and secretly used to advance radical leftist agendas in direct contravention of our most basic constitutional rights. Such aggression against liberty cannot be tolerated no matter the victims ideology and it now falls to our elected officials to uncover the full extent of this brazen assault on freedom.
Mr. Howie Rich is chairman of Americans for Limited Government.
