Issa committee is still wasting time and taxpayer money on the IRS non-scandal

Darrell Issa

Still wasting time and taxpayers money on the IRS non-scandal, Darrel Issa is attempting to redefine the fifth amendment for one last chance to find something to pin on someone.

On June 28th, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform met to hold a markup session of a resolution that Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when she made a voluntary opening statement at the May 22, 2013 full Committee hearing entitled "The IRS: Targeting Americans for Their Political Beliefs"

Just as an aside, doesn't the committee hearing's name give you the idea that Issa and his gang of numb-skulls have a pre-formed prejudicial view of the IRS that they are trying to impose on the rest of America?  I can't say that they are jumping to conclusions, but Republicans really have a knack for making our government appear to be the enemy.

Be it resolved then, that the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have hereby found new interpretations to the intent of the Fifth Amendment.  I guess they read between the lines of the text of the amendment.

Let's see if you can find the same interpretation by reading the actual text of the amendment that follows.

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

There are many rights stated in the amendment.  Did you find the hidden meaning that the Committee found?  If you did, then "taking the fifth" may mean something entirely different to you and may have more to do with imbibing a certain size of alcoholic spirits than constitutional law.

There is nothing in the amendment that indicates a person forfeits their fifth amendment right protecting them from being compelled to be a witness against themselves if they say anything in defense of themselves first.  

The simple truth is that Issa, frustrated that this attempt at a Republican generated conspiracy theory did not lead directly to the President's door, is trying to find some way of making his Committee's efforts appear something more than a waste of time.  

But they have been nothing more. 

The real scandal isn't at the IRS

The IRS is tasked with the responsibility to review applications for tax exemption.  In what is known as the 501(c) process, organizations can apply for tax exemption by providing information which proves to the satisfaction of the IRS, that they are non-political, social welfare type organizations whose primary function is not to advance a political agenda.

The IRS has recently come under attack by Republicans in Congress who claim that the IRS over-stepped their authority when it came to reviewing tax exemption applications from Tea Party type organizations.  The outrage of Republicans is evident  in the chambers of Congress where Republicans led by Darrel Issa, chair of the special investigative committee, have sworn to get to the bottom of the connection of IRS wrong-doing with the White House and more importantly with President Obama.

Perhaps because Republicans are blinded by the rush that getting a chance to implicate the President of wrong-doing elicits, they are missing some of the important facts which could, and by all rights should, turn the tide of wrong-doing onto their constituents.

First, to even refer to an organization as a Republican group implicates them as being political.  This violates the meaning of a 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 and should not entitle them to tax exemption.  Even so, the IRS approved applications for many obviously Republican political groups such as the "Tea Party Patriots" the "American Patriots Against Government Excess", "National Tea Party Group" and "Tea Party Radio."  If you have any doubt that these organizations are primarily politically focused, all you have to do is go to their web sites to see it for yourself.

So why did the IRS approve these applications?  If they followed their own guidelines, they should have known that these organizations were primarily involved in politics.  So what did they base their  decisions on?  Despite what the right wing media and Republicans in Congress are attempting to convey, the IRS did not make their decisions based on the names representing these organizations.  They could not have, otherwise they would not have approved the applications.  They made their decisions based on the information that the organizations provided.  

It appears a safe bet that the information provided to the IRS by the applicants was insufficient to implicate the organizations as political action committees.  If this was done by the applicants to  intentionally mislead the IRS review, then it is a crime which is punishable by fines and/or imprisonment.  That is the real scandal here.  These organizations might have knowingly hidden information from the IRS in order to get unfair and undeserved tax advantages.  That sounds familiar.  Where have we seen this before?  Oh yeah, Romney was pretty good at that.

Lindsey Graham

Now in a relentless pursuit to find something bad to pin on the President, Senator Lindsey Graham (R- SC) is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the entire IRS "scandal".  This could be the best thing that ever happened for the IRS and the worst thing for the Tea Party Patriots and their Republican leadership.

If a special prosecutor is called who is impartial, then I predict that the IRS and the President will be cleared of any wrong-doing.  Furthermore, some unhappy Tea Party organizations will be paying for their arrogance and deception when the real scandal is revealed.  Perhaps clearer Republican heads will prevail and convince Graham to drop the idea before the truth can be known.

That would be a pity.

TIGTA says no evidence leads to White House participation in IRS 501(c) scandal

TIGTA

So full of joy were Republicans when another so-called scandal looked like it could involve the upper levels of the Obama administration.  I'll call it the IRS501(c) scandal, even though calling it a scandal is a real stretch.  

Fox news contributors seriously reported that this IRS manipulation was being controlled by the White House so that Republicans would lose Ohio.  This had to be the case they believed, otherwise Obama would have lost the 2012 Presidential election.  People say ignorance is bliss but spreading that kind of misinformation is unforgivable. 

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) was notified by certain Republican members of Congress that they suspected wrongdoing at the IRS.  The TIGTA did an audit investigation of the situation at the IRS and published their findings.  They found no evidence that the White House was involved in any way.     

The incident took place during a time when Douglas H. Shulman was IRS Commissioner.  Mr. Shulman was a Republican and a George W. Bush appointee to the office.   Does anyone seriously think (other than Fox news and the radical right wing media) that President Obama could manipulate a Republican to target other Republicans for political gain?  Of course not.

George W. Bush

And what happened at the IRS exactly?  The IRS saw a dramatic increase in the number of applications by groups and individuals for 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 tax exempt status for their organization.  Per tax regulations 501(c)3 exempt organizations cannot have political ties at all and must receive IRS approval.  The 501(c)4 organizations may only have limited and not primary focus on political issues.  It is the job of the IRS to investigate these applications to ensure that they meet the requirements.

The IRS receives nearly 70,000 tax exemption requests each year.  All of the applications for tax exemption are sent to the IRS office in Cincinnati, Ohio where less than 200 employees must review each one.  In order to facilitate this daunting task, some of the workers there used character searches to find those exemptions that may be 501(c)3 or 501(c)4 types.  Since the workers noticed a lot of the applications had words such as "Tea Party" and "Patriot" which implied to them that they may be 501(c) exemption requests , they used such words to help them filter out the applications.  

IRS indicates that these were not the only search terms used and that there was no political bias intended in any of their searches.   In fact only 70 of the 296 cases reviewed contained the words "Tea Party".   However, IRS management realizes that this method is "inappropriate"  and vows to change the process.   They note that even if the search process was not used, information in the application would still have targeted these same groups for follow-up (or as IRS calls it "centralization".)   There are currently 470 cases that are centralized.

The TIGTA found that the IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax‑exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention.

They identified that ineffective IRS management:
1) allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months,
2) resulted in substantial delays in processing certain applications, and
3) allowed unnecessary information requests to be issued.

Although the processing of some applications with potential significant political campaign intervention was started soon after receipt, no work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months. This was due to delays in receiving assistance from the Exempt Organizations function Headquarters office.

For the 296 total political campaign intervention applications TIGTA reviewed as of December 17, 2012, 108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicants, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some for more than three years and crossing two election cycles).

More than 20 months after the initial case was identified, processing the cases began in earnest. Many organizations received requests for additional information from the IRS that included unnecessary, burdensome questions (e.g., lists of past and future donors). The IRS later informed some organizations that they did not need to provide previously requested information. IRS officials stated that any donor information received in response to a request from its Determinations Unit was later destroyed.

Ultimately, this so-called scandal is really a few IRS employees innocently trying to expedite their work assignments by a process which coincidentally gives the perception of political bias to people so biased in their own beliefs and so quick to judgement that they were inclined to blow this out of proportion, especially in their attempts to link it to President Obama.

Barack Obama is the President of the United States.  It's time Republicans started treating him that way.

President Obama