House committees are still digging into the IRS political targeting scandal, and based on a hearing Wednesday there's more to learn. The day produced more evidence blowing apart President Obama's claims that there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" or political motivation in the IRS handling of groups applying for tax-exempt status.
Mr. Obama wants
Americans to believe that the targeting resulted from the confusing tax
law governing nonprofits, which he says was "difficult" to interpret and
resulted in mere "bureaucratic" mistakes. This is also the
Administration's justification for issuing new regulations governing
501(c)(4)s that would effectively silence White House opponents this
election year. Published in the Federal Register in November, the new
rules cite the "lack of a clear and concise" regulation as reason for
the rewrite.
House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp blew up this fairy tale at Wednesday's hearing with new IRS Commissioner
John Koskinen.
Mr. Camp unveiled a June 14, 2012 email from Treasury career attorney
Ruth Madrigal
to key IRS officials in the tax-exempt department, including former director
Lois Lerner.
The email cites a blog post about the
political activity of tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups and reads: "Don't know
who in your organizations [sic] is keeping tabs on c4s, but since we
mentioned potentially addressing them (off-plan) in 2013, I've got my
radar up and this seemed interesting."
Interesting
for sure. The IRS typically puts out a public schedule of coming
regulations, and Mr. Camp noted that in this case "off-plan" appears to
mean "hidden from the public." He added that committee interviews with
IRS officials have found that the new 2013 rules were in the works as
early as 2011, meaning the Administration has "fabricated the rationale"
for this new regulation.
Mr. Camp
added that everything his committee has discovered contradicts the White
House argument that the IRS scandal was caused by legal "confusion."
The current rules governing 501(c)(4)s have existed, unchanged, since
1959. Prior to 2010 the IRS processed and approved tax-exempt
applications in fewer than three months with no apparent befuddlement.
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