In his final act as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee—he’s stepping down because of term limits—Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) released a report on Tuesday saying that IRS officials were swayed by Democrats calling for stronger regulations on nonprofit groups that had become more involved in politics.
TEA Party Patriots, one of the organizations targeted in the IRS scandal, had this to say about it:
“There is no question that the IRS as an agency, and its leaders individually, directed and implemented a scheme to silence and demoralize TEA Party groups,” said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Atlanta-based group. “We knew it was going on before Congress and the Treasury inspector-general confirmed it.”
“The truth is that it is still going on,” Martin said. “The IRS still plans to defy the will of hundreds of thousands of Americans by its plot to reissue cumbersome regulations early next year that will likely be little different from the regulations they proposed a year ago to shut down citizen free speech.”
The 210-page report blamed senior IRS executives, such as Lois Lerner, for failing to tell Congress what they knew about these efforts:
“Nearly five years after the IRS first began targeting conservative organization for additional scrutiny due to their political beliefs, the agency has still not escaped the shadow of its misdeeds and abuse of power,” the report read.
Cumbersome regulations and a tax code thousands of pages deep make it nearly impossible for taxpayers to do their filing, and even with professional help, compliance is just as impossible. For this reason alone, the IRS should be abolished. But the ease of which politicians have to use the IRS to intimidate and harass their political enemies is one more reason it is absolutely necessary.
What others had to say:
