Michael McAuliff Darrell Issa Hearing Reveals IRS-Targeted Groups Prefer To Be Political
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Darrell Issa's latest oversight hearing into the Internal Revenue Service's botched enforcement against tea party and other "social welfare" groups has revealed a dirty little secret: Many of those groups actually want to preserve the option to run as "dark money" political operations.
That revelation came primarily from the prepared testimony of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who spent much of his time Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sparring with Republican lawmakers over the pace of releasing documents.
The IRS has implemented all nine recommendations of the inspector general including clearing up the backlog in applications for tax-exempt status.
There was a simple way to clear that logjam: All any group had to do to be granted tax-exempt status as a social welfare nonprofit under section 501(c)4 of the U.S. tax code was to swear that it was, in fact, primarily engaged in social welfare work. To make it easy, the IRS decided that groups had to pledge they would confine their political activity to less than 40 percent of their work.
Koskinen revealed several dozen did so, but 19 refused, and he concludes this suggests these groups are more interested in politics than social welfare.
It looks like Darrell Issa's master plan for the Republican's campaign against the Democrats is fizzling out fast.