Impeachment of IRS Commissar John Koskinen begins

Conservatives say Koskinen hampered Congress’ effort to investigate the IRS for tough assessments of Tea Party groups that sought tax exemptions several years ago. Koskinen denies that. “For years the IRS has abused its power to target people based on their political views. Commissioner John Koskinen not only did nothing about it, but continued the trend of deception by deliberately keeping Congress and the American people in the dark,” Fleming said in a statement Tuesday. “To date no one has been held accountable and no one will unless we move forward with a resolution to require a vote on his impeachment.”

The Republican reaction to the IRS bungling was a clever and sustained effort to use the hated agency as a way to mobilize an angry constituency on the right, to enhance turnout in subsequent elections, and to raise money. The effort already succeeded at intimidating the agency—including Koskinen—from developing a new clear and appropriate standard, a bright line test, for achieving 501(c)4 designation, and even got the IRS, in a move that defies the law and common sense, to accept Crossroads GPS as a social-welfare organization. There is a broader motive here, coming from radical forces that want to blow up all of government as we know it. Intimidating, undermining, and destroying the IRS’s capacity to carry out its role, to collect all the tax money that’s owed, to starve government, makes all agencies perform more poorly, and leads to a backlash against government. The poor service that results from cutting personnel also alienates taxpayers, frustrates their efforts to keep up with tax law, and makes it easier to evade the law.

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