WhatFinger


Line in the sand.

VIDEO: McConnell tells IRS commissioner to resist Obama's political abuses



Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the floor yesterday and addressed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen with an interesting challenge: He wants Koskinen to resist directives from the White House and the Treasury Department to turn the IRS into an enforcer of the left's preferences on political speech.
The first few minutes are sort of broad and thematic, but then McConnell gets down to it with the question of why, exactly, an agency ostensibly tasked with collecting tax revenue has turned into the nation's regulator on who can say what and under what circumstances:

I'm not sure it accomplishes much for McConnell to publicly challenge Koskinen to defy his boss, except that it puts on record what an abuse this really is. That might make a difference at some point in the future if Republicans come back and do an inquiry on what the IRS has done to citizens. The record will show that McConnell implored Koskinen when all this began not to participate in such an abuse.

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But let's recognize why Democrats are seeking to use the IRS in this way. First, their rationale is that this is necessary in light of the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in the CitizensUnited case, which established the corporations have the same right as individuals to engage in political speech through the use of their money. The left has been apoplectic about this ruling ever since it came down - Obama even castigated the justices to their faces during the State of the Union address - and in the minds of the left any use of government to counteract the ruling is justified. That in itself shows how far off the rails they've gone. The Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government, and while both sides experience the frustration of not liking their rulings at times (conservatives certainly didn't like the ObamaCare ruling), we recognize their decisions are law. If you want to change the law, you can try, but Democrats prefer to direct a government agency to administratively undermine the decision instead. And when McConnell asks why the tax collection agency is now regulating political speech, the answer is simple: Because of the complexity of the tax code, every nonprofit that hopes to operate either needs a) a tax exemption; or b) a sugar daddy with infinitely deep pockets. Without such an onerous tax code, it wouldn't be necessary for nonprofits to seek exemptions, and they would have nothing to do with the IRS. Politicians understand this. They intentionally establish a highly complex tax code that gives them the power to decide who gets favor and who doesn't, and that allows them to use the IRS as a weapon against their political opponents. Kudos to McConnell for recognizing this is wrong, but he would go a lot farther toward solving the problem if he would exercise more effective leadership in replacing the current Leviathan tax code with a simple one.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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