This being Saturday, it is a bit of a slow day for additional facts being revealed about the various scandals in Washington. Perhaps the biggest news is getting little attention. We now know that the reason given by the IRS for the slow review of applications from Tea Party groups and the illegal harassment these groups received as part of that review was false. Lois Lerner, the woman who both headed the group responsible for these reviews and who broke the story 8 days ago with an apology, claimed that the reason for the entire mess was that there had been a flood of applications for tax exemptions in 2010. According to Lerner, that flood of applications was the result of the Citizens United case that allowed corporations and unions to form these tax exempt groups. Remember that?
The data on these applications has now been released. What we find is that there actually was a drop off in the number of applications in 2010 from prior years. The lower numbers remained in 2011 as well. In other words, there was no flood of applications in 2010; quite the contrary was true. This also means that there was no increase in these organizations due to Citizens United.
This may not sound like much, but it is extremely important. Since the IRS scandal broke wide open, the folks on the left who are still trying to diminish its import or to claim that no scandal exists have consistently said that there was no political motivation here. No, they said, what happened may have been messy, but it was the result of Citizens United and the flood of applications that followed. The IRS had to do something to gain control of the process and the list of special targets was that response. Just today, I read columns promoting this claim in The New Yorker, The Guardian and the New York Times. But it just is not true.
So we are left with the IRS harassing conservative and Tea Party groups, releasing confidential information about those groups to liberal site and individuals including the co-chair of the Obama re-election campaign, and auditing those who criticized Obama's policies or who contributed to Romney, and we have no explanation of that conduct other than that the IRS was using its might to punish political opponents of the president. For those who may not recall, this was the same thing alleged in the second article of impeachment voted on against Richard Nixon. There is, of course, a big difference here. Nixon was alleged to have encouraged the use of the IRS against his enemies; there is, as of now, no proof that Obama did the same. We know that the practice at the IRS only made it up the ladder of the administration as far as the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, but there is much more investigation to come. Time will tell.
The data on these applications has now been released. What we find is that there actually was a drop off in the number of applications in 2010 from prior years. The lower numbers remained in 2011 as well. In other words, there was no flood of applications in 2010; quite the contrary was true. This also means that there was no increase in these organizations due to Citizens United.
This may not sound like much, but it is extremely important. Since the IRS scandal broke wide open, the folks on the left who are still trying to diminish its import or to claim that no scandal exists have consistently said that there was no political motivation here. No, they said, what happened may have been messy, but it was the result of Citizens United and the flood of applications that followed. The IRS had to do something to gain control of the process and the list of special targets was that response. Just today, I read columns promoting this claim in The New Yorker, The Guardian and the New York Times. But it just is not true.
So we are left with the IRS harassing conservative and Tea Party groups, releasing confidential information about those groups to liberal site and individuals including the co-chair of the Obama re-election campaign, and auditing those who criticized Obama's policies or who contributed to Romney, and we have no explanation of that conduct other than that the IRS was using its might to punish political opponents of the president. For those who may not recall, this was the same thing alleged in the second article of impeachment voted on against Richard Nixon. There is, of course, a big difference here. Nixon was alleged to have encouraged the use of the IRS against his enemies; there is, as of now, no proof that Obama did the same. We know that the practice at the IRS only made it up the ladder of the administration as far as the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, but there is much more investigation to come. Time will tell.
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