The headline above should be news to exactly nobody, Well…Except for the president of the United States. He went on John Stewart on Tuesday to insist that no way, no how, did the Internal Revenue Service deliberately target conservative organizations. The Washington Times summarizes it thusly:
Mr. Obama said Congress “passed a crummy law” that provided vague guidance to the people who worked at the IRS. And he said that employees implemented the law “poorly and stupidly.”
The president went on to say that the “real scandal around the IRS is that they have been so poorly funded that they cannot go after these folks who are deliberately avoiding tax payments.”
Note that John Stewart, towards the end of the chat, called for mandatory national service for Americans. So this episode is a must-watch of epic fail.
But Obama’s comments come after the IRS’s own inspector general admitted that the tax agency targeted Tea Party groups “based on names and policy positions instead of indications of political campaign intervention.”
And, as if to emphasize the point, the day after Obama smarmed away concerns about the use of the IRS as a political weapon, the Government Accountability Office issued its own report, warning “The control deficiencies GAO found increase the risk that EO could select organizations for examination in an unfair manner—for example, based on an organization’s religious, educational, political, or other views.”
But it’s all on Congress and a “crummy law,” of course.
Henry
August 9, 2015 at 12:56 pmI’m sorry, who is the IRS’s boss, again? Oh right, that would be Obama. Therefore it’s his damn job to give the bureau “proper guidance,” not Congress’s.