Critics of President Barack Obama have long sought a scandal with which to tar his administration and with revelations of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups they have a legitimate complaint. That it will probably not lead to the Oval Office itself should not deter them from fully investigating and exposing what went on.
The IRS has admitted that it targeted conservative political groups, particularly those with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their names. At issue was their application for nonprofit status, many of which were then subjected to lengthy delays.
At first it was thought this might have been the aberrant behavior of one field office in Cincinnati. But all applications for tax-exempt status go through the Cincinnati office.
There is a legitimate question here in that the law limits how non-profits in some tax categories can be involved in politics. But that sort of scrutiny must be applied evenly. Looking only at conservative groups is textbook abuse of power.
USA Today reported Tuesday that an inspector general’s report said the IRS asked such groups seven “unnecessary” questions. Among them were queries about what issues the group considers important and what its positions are on those issues. The IRS also asked about the political affiliation of the groups’ officers, whether any have or will run for public office and what they might know about other organizations.
Calling questions like that “unnecessary” is too gentle. “Wrong” would be more accurate.
Short of physical violence, taxation is the most naked and most easily abused government power. While in a republic most taxes are necessary and legitimate, the fact is that in their purest form they amount to a government seizure of private property backed up by the threat of force. That is something that has to be handled with extreme care.
It has not always been. As USA Today reported Monday, a number of presidents have abused IRS authority. Historians have long thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt used it to investigate his critics, including Louisiana’s Sen. Huey Long and Hoover administration Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Before becoming president, then-U.S. Rep. Lyndon Johnson reportedly got Roosevelt to end an investigation of some of his supporters. And as president, Johnson is thought to have traded tax favors for votes. President John F. Kennedy’s administration had a program that targeted right wing groups such as the John Birch Society.
Probably the most egregious abuse of IRS authority was under President Richard Nixon. He famously compiled an “enemies list” of political opponents who were then targeted by the IRS.
And thanks to Nixon, President Obama’s foes will find tying him to this directly will be all but impossible. In the aftermath of the Nixon scandals federal law was changed to prevent presidential interference in IRS actions. While the president can fire the IRS commissioner, he cannot set the agency’s policies. The commissioner reports to the secretary of the treasury and serves a five-year term specifically to keep it out of synch with presidential politics. That is why the commissioner in charge when the targeting of “tea party” groups began in 2010 was appointed by President George W. Bush.
The president also responded correctly when this abuse came to light, calling it “outrageous” and saying succinctly: “I have no patience for it. I will not tolerate it.”
He had better not. Abuse of IRS power is an easily understood offense that does not lend itself to obfuscation. While the president almost certainly did not cause the reported abuse, it nonetheless happened on his watch.
Obama seems to get that, saying Wednesday that “Americans have a right to be angry about it.” And at the same time, the acting IRS commissioner “resigned.” But that has to be seen as only a start. Obama also needs to move quickly and decisively to fix the agency itself.