Lawmakers advise elimination of IRS commissioner job, end Obamacare management
On the tenth day of the new administration of President Donald Trump, among the many issues the White House faces is the obvious corruption within the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Last year in the thick of the battle for the presidency between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Trump, Conservative lawmakers were up-in-arms over reports emanating from records obtained directly from the IRS and documents they received from watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch.
As a result of seeing overwhelming evidence corruption, misconduct and harassment aimed at President Barack Obama’s so-called “enemies list,” Republican lawmakers proposed a total revamping of the IRS from top to bottom. The GOP members of congress accused the agency of being a political arm of the Democratic Party rather than a nonpartisan, government tax collection agency, according to the House pf Representatives Oversight Committee’s report titled, “Making Sure Targeting Never Happens: Getting Politics Out of the IRS and Other Solutions.”
The Oversight Committee’s Republican members, led at that time by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-California, claimed they possess overwhelming evidence that President Barack Obama’s unprecedented condemnation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the controversial Citizens United case encouraged IRS’s upper-echelon staff members to target conservative groups such as the numerous Tea Party organizations, pro-gun owner groups, and other conservative or libertarian organizations.
The GOP’s congressional report also states that too many IRS executives were overwhelmed with kicking off the IRS’s role in the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a/k/a ObamaCare, which in essence allowed IRS officials like Lois Lerner, the former director of tax-exempt groups and the central figure in the Tea Party controversy, to have too much autonomy for a political operative in a supposedly non-political position..
Under the President Barack Obama, the IRS has become a partisan “body and full-fledged arm of the administration in power,” the Oversight report said.
One of the key changes sought by the Oversight Committee’s Republican members report is the elimination of the position of Commissioner of the IRS and the creation of a bipartisan group that could manage the agency that is responsible for handling trillions of taxpayer dollars.
Rep. Darrell Issa’s report states:
“Other operational failures within the IRS contributed to the targeting. The IRS trained its agents to identify and elevate applications that could draw media attention, even though media attention has no bearing on a group’s qualification for tax-exemption.
“As Washington employees evaluated the applications, they evaluated whether the groups’ activities were “good” nonprofit activities or merely “emotional” propaganda with “little educational value.”The IRS allowed these tax-exempt applications to languish for years without action. Subsequently, as it sought to work through the backlog, the agency requested inappropriate and burdensome information from groups applying for tax-exempt status.”
But the committee member jokingly referred to as Issa’s arch-rival, Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, condemned the new report, and took issue with the proposal to eliminate the IRS commissioner’s position.
However, during the Issa-led IRS probe, information obtained by the public-interest group, Judicial Watch, pointed to Rep. Cummings as being one of the Democrats who had complained to Lerner about the non-profit groups that opposed the overall Democratic Party political agenda.
One of the Republican proposals that angered Obama and his minions was the suggestion that the Affordable Care Act implementation be taken away from the IRS and given to a more nonpartisan group that’s free from White House manipulation. However, ACA may be a moot point since it is either imploding by itself or it will be rescinded and replaced with a more conservative approach — in other words no Democrats with their hands in the pockets of the American people.
