By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--February 13, 2014
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Senate Democrats facing tough elections this year want the Internal Revenue Service to play a more aggressive role in regulating outside groups expected to spend millions of dollars on their races. In the wake of the IRS targeting scandal, the Democrats are publicly prodding the agency instead of lobbying them directly. They are also careful to say the IRS should treat conservative and liberal groups equally, but they're concerned about an impending tidal wave of attack ads funded by GOP-allied organizations. Much of the funding for those groups is secret, in contrast to the donations lawmakers collect, which must be reported publicly. One of the most powerful groups is Americans for Prosperity, funded by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. It has already spent close to $30 million on ads attacking Democrats this election cycle.501(4)(c) groups, on both sides of the aisle, use the concept of "social welfare" to cover politically motivated advertising. In the last election, Democrats had no problem with this kind of thing, because it was helping them guarantee President Obama's second term. Now, however, it's a grotesque miscarriage of justice.
Asked if the IRS should play a more active role policing political advocacy by groups that claim to be focused on social welfare, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) responded, "Absolutely." "Both on the left and the right," she said. "As taxpayers, we should not be providing a write-off to groups to do political activity, and that's exactly what we're doing." She called the glut of political spending by self-described social welfare groups that qualify under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code "outrageous."Jeanne Shaheen is currently thought to be safe, but could be in trouble if Scott Brown decides to invade her turf. So, she's hoping the IRS will intimidate potential opposition groups to help her hedge her bets. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) is in far worse shape:
Sen. Mark Pryor (Ark.), the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, said the IRS has jurisdiction over 501(c)(4) groups, as well as charities, which fall under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code and sometimes engage in quasi-political activity. "That whole 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4) [issue], those are IRS numbers. It is inherently an internal revenue matter," he said. "There are two things you don't want in political money, in the fundraising world and expenditure world. You don't want secret money, and you don't want unlimited money, and that's what we have now."Note that Pryor isn'taskingthe IRS todoanything to help him out. That would be unseemly and possibly illegal. He's simply trying to remind America's tax collectors that this is just one of the many areas over which they have some level of influence. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. As always with the current crop of Democrats, they're willfully ignoring the obvious. As Ed Morrissey points out over at HotAir, if Dems are unhappy with the current campaign finance laws they have a perfectly legitimate way of dealing with their displeasure.
Griping about this now is not just hypocritical, it's an expression of impotence. The legislative branch writes the laws; if they don't like the current campaign-finance structure, then they should replace it with something that works better -- like full disclosure and an end to contribution limits and tax exemptions for donations to outside groups. If Senate Democrats actually took civic responsibility seriously, they'd propose such a solution, and I'd guess it would get a significant amount of support from Republicans, too.Of course they won't do that, because they love the current rules when they're working in their favor. Beyond that, why bother to go through the hassle of changing laws when you can just send the IRS out on another intimidation mission? That they're being this vocal about something so obviously shady means two things are in play. 1. Democrats have some internal polling data that paints a far uglier picture than they're admitting publicly. They're facing a 2014 perfect storm of apathy among their base, anger among their opponents and a general lack of sympathetic funding. 2. Senate Dems are hard at work on their "why we lost" excuses. Big conservative money will be blamed, and they can spend a few years trying to distract people from the ACA with a lot of campaign finance reform hoopla. It'll play right into their bogus "right-wing fatcat" shtick.
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