US and EU Comparisons

 From the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Our « culture » https://t.co/RZK5YlpsCj pic.twitter.com/QeOtT75a2e

— French Response (@FrenchResponse) January 22, 2026

Endorsing from the Pulpit

Many posts discuss the connections between churches and politics.

David A. Fahrenthold at NYT:

The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.

The agency made that statement in a court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters.

The plaintiffs that sued the Internal Revenue Service had previously asked a federal court in Texas to create an even broader exemption — to rule that all nonprofits, religious and secular, were free to endorse candidates to their members. That would have erased a bedrock idea of American nonprofit law: that tax-exempt groups cannot be used as tools of any campaign.

Instead, the I.R.S. agreed to a narrower carveout — one that experts in nonprofit law said might sharply increase politicking in churches, even though it mainly seemed to formalize what already seemed to be the agency’s unspoken policy.

...

The ban on campaigning by nonprofits is named after former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced it as a senator in 1954. President Trump has repeatedly called for its repeal.

Shady Fundraising

Many posts have discussed campaign finance.

David A. Fahrenthold and Tiff Fehr at NYT:

A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.

...

In theory, it is a political nonprofit called a 527, after a section of the tax code, that can raise unlimited donations to help or oppose candidates, promote issues or encourage voting.

In reality, it is part of a group of five linked nonprofits that have exploited thousands of donors in ways that have been hidden until now by a blizzard of filings, lax oversight and a blind spot in the campaign finance system.

Since 2014, the five groups have pulled in $89 million from small-dollar donors who were pitched on building political support for police officers, veterans and firefighters.

But just 1 percent of the money they raised was used to help candidates via donations, ads or targeted get-out-the-vote messages, according to an analysis by The Times of the groups’ public filings.

...

The campaign-finance system is built to police who puts money into politics, legal experts say. These groups embodied a flaw: The system is poorly prepared to stop those who raise money and channel it somewhere other than candidates and causes.

By minimizing their aid to candidates, the consultants who helped set up the five nonprofits avoided scrutiny from the Federal Election Commission and most state watchdogs, and put their groups under the jurisdiction of a distracted and underfunded regulator, the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, their spending records were posted not on the F.E.C.’s easily searchable site, but on a byzantine I.R.S. page written in bureaucratic jargon. 

...

“Constructing an elaborate self-licking ice cream cone, or fund-raising cycle that feeds itself, that’s not an exempt purpose,” said Matthew Sanderson, a lawyer at the firm Caplin & Drysdale who has advised Republican campaigns, using the I.R.S.’s term for an allowable use of the groups’ money. “The fund-raising has to be for something.”

...

The organizations’ calls were recorded by Nomorobo, a company that collects robocalls so it can help customers block them. The company’s founder, Aaron Foss, said it had recorded tens of thousands of calls from just these four groups — putting them among the most prolific and longest-running robocallers his network has ever tracked.

The calls captured by Nomorobo were made using a powerful new technology, a “soundboard,” according to a spokesman for the groups’ largest vendor for fund-raising calls, New Jersey-based Residential Programs, Inc.

A soundboard is a computer program, preloaded with snippets of recorded dialogue, down to uh-huhs, thank-yous and mother-in-law jokes. By clicking buttons, an operator anywhere in the world can “speak” to donors in colloquial English without saying a word.

“One, it keeps everybody on script. Two, you don’t hear the foreign accent. And three, you don’t hear the call center noise,” Mr. Foss said.

“If you say, ‘Are you a robot?’,” Mr. Foss said, “there’s a button that says, ‘No.’”

Center for Competitive Politics v. Harris

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a California state law requiring charities that raise money in the state to disclose the names of major contributors.

The Recorder explains:

Under California law, in order to solicit tax deductible contributions in that state, a non-profit corporation or other organization must be registered with the state’s Registry of Charitable Trusts. To maintain its registered status, the entity must file an annual report with the California Attorney General’s Office, and must include with that report a copy of IRS Form 990 Schedule B. Schedule B is a disclosure of the names and contributions of an entity’s “significant donors,” (donors who have contributed more than $5,000 in a single year).

After it registered in 2008, CCP [the Center for Competitive Politics] filed only redacted versions of Sched. B, omitting the names and addresses of its donors. In 2014, the Attorney General required CCP to submit an unredacted Sched. B.

CCP filed suit, alleging that the Attorney General’s requirement that CCP file an unredacted Sched. B amounted to a compelled disclosure of its supporters’ identities that infringed CCP’s and its supporters’ First Amendment rights to freedom of association.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

In 2014, [Attorney General Kamala] Harris ordered the center and other nonprofits to disclose the identities of donors who contributed more than $5,000 in a single year. The disclosures are not made public, but office staff examine them for potential suspicious activity.

The center argued the reporting requirement could make donors fearful of contributing because Harris’ system for preserving confidentiality was not fail-safe.

The court called that argument “speculative” and concluded the rule served a valid law enforcement purpose.

“The attorney general has a compelling interest in enforcing the laws of California,” wrote Judge Richard Paez, a Clinton appointee.

David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, said the group planned to appeal. “We think the decision is wrong and threatens 1st Amendment speech rights,” he said in a statement.

Civil Asset Forfeiture

Shaila Dewan reports at The New York Times that the IRS has seized the assets of law-abiding citizens without even an allegation of criminal conduct. The government can keep the money, and its victims have to prove their innocence to get it back.

On Thursday, in response to questions from The New York Times, the I.R.S. announced that it would curtail the practice, focusing instead on cases where the money is believed to have been acquired illegally or seizure is deemed justified by “exceptional circumstances.”

Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the I.R.S., said in a written statement, “This policy update will ensure that C.I. continues to focus our limited investigative resources on identifying and investigating violations within our jurisdiction that closely align with C.I.’s mission and key priorities.” He added that making deposits under $10,000 to evade reporting requirements, called structuring, is still a crime whether the money is from legal or illegal sources. The new policy will not apply to past seizures.

The I.R.S. is one of several federal agencies that pursue such cases and then refer them to the Justice Department. The Justice Department does not track the total number of cases pursued, the amount of money seized or how many of the cases were related to other crimes, said Peter Carr, a spokesman.

But the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based public interest law firm that is seeking to reform civil forfeiture practices, analyzed structuring data from the I.R.S., which made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.

The Washington Post reports:

Police agencies have used hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Americans under federal civil forfeiture law in recent years to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear. They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.

The details are contained in thousands of annual reports submitted by local and state agencies to the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, an initiative that allows local and state police to keep up to 80 percent of the assets they seize. The Washington Post obtained 43,000 of the reports dating from 2008 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents offer a sweeping look at how police departments and drug task forces across the country are benefiting from laws that allow them to take cash and property without proving a crime has occurred. The law was meant to decimate drug organizations, but The Post found that it has been used as a routine source of funding for law enforcement at every level.

The Post also reports:

A leading House lawmaker asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday to provide an array of documents and data relating to the Justice Department’s role in tens of thousands of cash and property seizures made in recent years by state and local police under federal civil asset forfeiture laws.

...
The request by Rep. F. James “Jim” Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, terrorism, homeland security and investigations, is part of an inquiry into the billions of dollars in seizures made through the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, the federal government’s largest asset forfeiture initiative.

...
“The implications on civil liberties are dire,” he said in the letter to Holder. “The right to own property is a fundamental right implicitly recognized in the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. I also believe that it is a human right.”

Sensenbrenner’s request follows a Washington Post investigation that found that 61,998 cash seizures have been made on U.S. highways and elsewhere since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling more than $2.5 billion.

The Homeland Security and Justice departments and other federal agencies received $800 million of that total; state and local authorities kept the rest.

Friday’s letter follows similar requests by Sensenbrenner for documents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In those letters, Sensenbrenner sought details about how challenges from cash and property owners are handled.

IRS and Constitutional Education

At The Washington Post's Vokokh Consiracy blog, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz writes:

It is now well known that the IRS targeted tea party organizations. What is less well known, but perhaps even more scandalous, is that the IRS also targeted those who would educate their fellow citizens about the United States Constitution.

According to the inspector general’s report (pp. 30 & 38), this particular IRS targeting commenced on Jan. 25, 2012 — the beginning of the election year for President Obama’s second campaign. On that date: “the BOLO [‘be on the lookout’] criteria were again updated.” The revised criteria included “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”'

Grass-roots organizations around the country, such as the Linchpins of Liberty (Tennessee), the Spirit of Freedom Institute (Wyoming), and the Constitutional Organization of Liberty (Pennsylvania), allege that they were singled out for special scrutiny at least in part for their work in constitutional education. There may have been many more.

The tea party is viewed with general suspicion in some quarters, and it is not difficult, alas, to imagine the mindset of the officials who decided to target tea party organizations for special scrutiny. But federal officers swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” It is chilling to think that these same officials who are suspicious of the tea party are equally suspicious of the Constitution itself.

What is most corrosive about this IRS tripwire is that it is triggered by a particular point of view; it is not, as First Amendment scholars say, viewpoint-neutral. It does not include obfuscating or denigrating the Constitution; only those “involved in … educating on the Constitution” are captured by this criterion. This viewpoint targeting potentially skews every national debate about politics or government. And the skew is not strictly liberal; indeed, it should trouble liberals as much as conservatives. The ultimate checks on executive power are to be found in the United States Constitution. Insidiously, then, suppressing those “involved in … educating on the Constitution” actually skews national debate in favor of unchecked executive power

IRS and Obamacare Penalties

Our chapter on bureaucracy notes that tax law is often a means to do things other than raise revenue. USA Today reports:

The IRS, which is in charge of enforcing compliance with the new insurance requirement, is accustomed to carrying big sticks. The first step it usually takes against tax scofflaws is to file public liens against them. Such a lien means the IRS has first dibs on any money you acquire, [legal scholar Andy] Grewal said.

"It puts a cloud over all your assets," he said. "If there's a public record that the IRS is after you, no one's going to lend you money."

That means no mortgage, no car loan, no credit cards — until you settle up with Uncle Sam.

Grewal said liens are usually enough to bring tax deadbeats to heel. If not, the IRS can seize assets, including your car or your house. And in extreme cases, if you willfully refuse to pay taxes, authorities can charge you criminally, put you on trial and send you to prison.

But when it passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Congress banned the IRS from using any of its usual techniques to force people to pay the penalty for failing to obtain health insurance.

Alice Helle, a Des Moines lawyer who has been working on Affordable Care Act issues, speculated that members of Congress had political motives for disarming the IRS on this issue.

"I think they thought, 'We're not going to throw people in jail or put a lien on their house for not having coverage,'" she said.

Helle doubts many Americans will decide to demonstrate displeasure with the Affordable Care Act by purposely refusing to have health insurance and then daring the IRS to try to punish them.

Trust in Government

The Pew Research Center reports:

Public trust in the government, already quite low, has edged even lower in a survey conducted just before the Oct. 16 agreement to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.

Just 19% say that they trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always or most of the time, down seven points since January. The current measure matches the level reached in August 2011, following the last battle over the debt ceiling. Explore a Pew Research interactive on Public Trust in Government: 1958-2013.

The share of the public saying they are angry at the federal government, which equaled an all-time high in late September (26%), has ticked up to 30%. Another 55% say they are frustrated with the government. Just 12% say they are basically content with the federal government.

Despite highly negative views of the federal government overall, the public has favorable views of many of its agencies and departments, which were closed by the shutdown. Majorities have favorable opinions of 12 of 13 agencies tested – with the IRS the lone exception (44% favorable).

...
Republicans have less positive views than Democrats of several of the agencies and departments included in the survey. The biggest difference is in opinions of the IRS: 65% of Democrats have a favorable opinion of the IRS compared with 40% of independents and just 23% of Republicans.

Affordable Care Act, Congress, and the IRS

In Federalist 57, Madison wrote:

I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America -- a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.

The New York Times reports:

As President Obama barnstorms the country promoting his health care law, one audience very close to home is growing increasingly anxious about the financial implications of the new coverage: members of Congress and their personal staffs.

Under a wrinkle that dates back to enactment of the law, members of Congress and thousands of their aides are required to get their coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.

But the law does not provide any obvious way for the federal government to continue paying its share of the premiums for the comprehensive coverage. 

If the government cannot do so, it could mean an additional expense of $5,000 a year for individuals and $11,000 for families under some of the most popular plans.

Not surprisingly, that idea is unpopular on Capitol Hill.

The Washington Examiner reports:

IRS employees have a prominent role in Obamacare, but their union wants no part of the law.
National Treasury Employees Union officials are urging members to write their congressional representatives in opposition to receiving coverage through President Obama’s health care law.

The union leaders are providing members with a form letter to send to the congressmen that says “I am very concerned about legislation that has been introduced by Congressman Dave Camp to push federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and into the insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.”

The NTEU represents 150,000 federal employees overall, including most of the nearly 100,000 IRS workers.

Like most other federal workers, IRS employees currently get their health insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which also covers members of Congress.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp offered the bill in response to reports of congressional negotiations that would exempt lawmakers and their staff from Obamacare.

Archbishop Says Religious Freedom is at Risk

Our textbook discusses the role of religion in American public life.  Religious leaders have often spoken out on key issues (e.g., Rev. Martin Luther King and civil rights) and government affects church operations in significant ways.  We can see both points in a recent column by Philadelphia's Roman Catholic archbishop Charles J. Chaput:

As Mollie Hemingway, Stephen Krason and Wayne Laugesen have all pointed out, the current IRS scandal - involving IRS targeting of "conservative" organizations - also has a religious dimension. Selective IRS pressure on religious individuals and organizations has drawn very little media attention. Nor should we expect any, any time soon, for reasons Hemingway outlines for the Intercollegiate Review. But the latest IRS ugliness is a hint of the treatment disfavored religious groups may face in the future, if we sleep through the national discussion of religious liberty now.

The day when Americans could take the Founders' understanding of religious freedom as a given is over. We need to wake up.

Rating Institutions

The Wall Street Journal reports:

American institutions didn’t fare well in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, released Wednesday.

Of the 10 institutions listed on the poll – among them, large corporations, the national news media, and the Internal Revenue Service – only the military and the automobile industry received confidence marks of over 25%.

Two thirds of respondents – 67% — said they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in the military, by far the highest rating of any of the institutions included in the survey. But it’s not all good news for the military. Its number is down from 76% the last time the question was asked in the poll, in May 2012. And it marks an 18-point drop in confidence since January 2002, several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the reading stood at 85%.
...
Among the institutions with the lowest confidence ratings were social-networking websites, with a rating of 13%. Notably, this rating has decreased particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds. In 2012, 34% of that demographic said they were confident in social networking websites, while 31% had little or no confidence in them. In June’s poll, the confidence rating dropped 13 points to 21%, with 35% saying they had little or no confidence.

The financial industry’s rating dropped by 1 point since the 2012 poll, receiving an 11% rating this year. Health-insurance companies and the IRS tied for the lowest rating, at 10%. The health-insurance rating dropped by 3 points since last year’s poll. (The IRS wasn’t included in the poll last year.)

The IRS Story Continues

The Washington Post reports:

The Internal Revenue Service spent an estimated $49 million on at least 220 conferences for employees over a three-year span beginning in fiscal 2010, according to a forthcoming report that will prompt fresh scrutiny of the already embattled agency.

The findings come as the Obama administration is overhauling the agency after officials said dozens of groups were inappropriately scrutinized as they sought tax-exempt status. The admission forced the resignation of the agency’s acting commissioner and has sparked criminal and congressional investigations.

Seeking to get ahead of the fresh controversy, acting IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel acknowledged the report in a statement late Friday, but he did not share any of the findings. He called the spending “an unfortunate vestige from a prior era” and said the agency has significantly curtailed conference spending in recent years.

During a conference in Anaheim, the Washington Post also reports, IRS employees saw taxpayer-financed "training" videos.

The first video is a parody of the “Star Trek” television and movie franchise and stars division employees discussing how they might identify and address allegations of tax fraud. Aides briefed on the audit said employees paid for Star Trek uniforms they wear in the video, but the agency paid for the construction of an elaborate mock-up of the bridge of the starship Enterprise, the vessel used to transport the show’s characters.

Watch the video here ...

Another video aired at the conference stars some of the same employees learning how to dance the “Cupid Shuffle” from a 2007 song by the performer Cupid.

Watch the video here ...

In recent years, the Obama administration has ordered significant cuts in administrative expenses for travel, conferences and the distribution of free “swag,” or promotional materials.
As part of the cutbacks, the IRS began producing training videos to show employees instead of flying them to training sessions in other cities. In one of the training videos produced 2011, employees star in a spoof of “Gilligan’s Island.”  Watch the video here ...

At The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan argues that the IRS targeting scandal is different from earlier ones.

In previous IRS scandals it was the powerful abusing the powerful—a White House moving against prominent financial or journalistic figures who, because of their own particular status or the machineries at their disposal, could pretty much take care of themselves. A scandal erupts, there are headlines, and then people go on their way. The dreadful thing about this scandal, what makes it ominous, is that this is the elites versus regular citizens. It’s the mighty versus normal people. It’s the all-powerful directors of the administrative state training their eyes and moving on uppity and relatively undefended Americans.

That’s what makes this scandal different, and why if it’s not stopped now it will never stop. Because every four years you can get yourself a new president and a new White House, but you won’t easily get yourself a whole new administrative state. It’s there, it’s not going away, not anytime soon. If it isn’t forced back into its cage now, and definitively, it will prowl the land hungrily forever. 

NBC reports:

"We're outstanding public servants, dedicated to our craft and to the public we serve,” said one current IRS Cincinnati employee contacted at home over the weekend, who agreed to speak to NBC News on the condition of anonymity. “To suggest that we're 'rogue' should be considered slander.”

Asked about the motivations for the targeting, the employee said, “I trust my management team."

New IRS Revelations

At McClatchy Newspapers, David Lightman and Kevin G. Hall report:

A group of anti-abortion activists in Iowa had to promise the Internal Revenue Service it wouldn’t picket in front of Planned Parenthood.

Catherine Engelbrecht’s family and business in Texas were audited by the government after her voting-rights group sought tax-exempt status from the IRS.

Retired military veteran Mark Drabik of Nebraska became active in and donated to conservative causes, then found the IRS challenging his church donations.

While the developing scandal over the targeting of conservatives by the tax agency has largely focused to date on its scrutiny of groups with words such as “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, these examples suggest the government was looking at a broader array of conservative groups and perhaps individuals. Their collective experiences at a minimum could spread skepticism about the fairness of a powerful agency that should be above reproach and at worst could point to a secret political vendetta within the government against conservatives.

The emerging stories from real people raise questions about whether the IRS scrutiny extended beyond applicants for tax-exempt status and whether individuals who donated to these tax-exempt organizations or to conservative causes also were targeted.

IRS, ACA, and Public Opinion

CNN reports:

 A majority of Americans still oppose the nation's new health care measure, three years after it became law, according to a new survey.

But a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday also indicates that more than a quarter of those who oppose the law, known by many as Obamacare, say they don't support the measure because it doesn't go far enough.

According to the poll, 43% of the public says it supports the health care law, a figure that's mostly unchanged in CNN polling since the measure was passed in 2010 by a Congress then controlled by Democrats and signed into law by President Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent of those questioned say they oppose the law, also relatively unchanged since 2010.

The survey indicates that 35% oppose the health care law because it's too liberal, with 16% saying they oppose the measure because it isn't liberal enough.

The wide partisan divide over the law remains. Nearly three quarters of Democrats say they favor the Affordable Care Act. That number drops to 16% among Republicans.

CNN also reports:

This much is known for sure: The IRS is charged with playing a key role in implementing health reform.

"Tax provisions included in the Affordable Care Act represent the largest set of tax law changes the IRS has had to implement in more than 20 years," the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration noted in a recent report.

The ACA has some 500 provisions, and more than 40 amend or add provisions to the tax code, according to the report. It also adds considerably to the agency's administrative workload.

Among the IRS' biggest tasks will be to:

• Collect information from employers and insurers ...
• Figure out who qualifies for subsidies or Medicaid ...
• Determine who must pay a penalty ...
•  Penalize employers that don't provide affordable coverage.

 The IRS role in carrying out the law does not bode well for its popularity. Gallup reports:

A new Gallup poll finds Americans' views of the job the Internal Revenue Service is doing skewing much more negative than in the past, with 42% saying the IRS is doing a poor job, up from 20% in 2009 and 15% in 2003. Meanwhile, positive ratings of the IRS have declined 14 points since 2009, from 40% to 27%.

These results are part of a May 20-21 update of a Gallup trend on Americans' ratings of nine major federal government agencies. The poll was conducted at a time that the IRS has received harsh criticism for allegedly singling out conservative-leaning groups for greater scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. The decline in the IRS' image has left it as the only agency of the nine receiving a net negative rating.

Americans Still Think That Government Is Too Powerful

Gallup reports:

Fifty-four percent of Americans say the federal government today has too much power. Despite the recent controversies facing federal agencies such as the IRS, these views are only marginally higher than in 2012, and slightly lower than in 2010 and 2011. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the federal government has too much power, whereas in the three years prior to that, Americans were more inclined to believe federal power was "about right."

Americans' views of federal power have become a renewed focal point in recent weeks with allegations that the IRS used its power to selectively audit certain types of organizations, and news reports of Justice Department investigations into Associated Press and Fox News records and emails. It does not appear, however, that these news stories have dramatically altered Americans' views of the federal government's power. The 54% who now say the federal government has "too much power" is in the same general range as it has been since 2005.

Only 8% of Americans say the federal government has "too little" power, while 36% say the government has about the right amount of power.

As would be expected, there is a major gulf between Republicans' and Democrats' views on this issue. More than twice as many Republicans (76%) as Democrats (32%) say the government has too much power, with a majority of independents coming down on the same side as Republicans.

IRS and ACA

At National Journal, Michael Catalini asks rhetorically:  what is the connection between the IRS and the Affordable Care Act?

The short answer is: a substantial one. In his ruling on the constitutionality of Obama's health care law, Chief Justice John Roberts that Congress can regulate health care under its ability to tax. That set up the agency to take a lead in implementing the law, along with the Health and Human Services Department. (The Labor Department will also play a role.) There are 47 tax provisions -- including the small business health care credit and the medical device tax -- that will go into effect. The agency will have to administer those provisions and collect taxes where they're due.

The agency will also have to determine whether people qualify for a health insurance premium tax credit as part of the minimum coverage requirement. Americans will also have to report their insurance status on their taxes each year, and the agency will have to review that and collect a $95 penalty on those not carrying insurance. Businesses will be required to provide health care to their employees or face a penalty if they do not. The agency will set these rules and collect the penalties when businesses aren't in compliance.

And what is the connection between the IRS scandal and the health law?  CBS explains:

Sarah Hall Ingram was the head of the IRS office overseeing tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012, during which time the agency initiated a practice of paying additional - and often burdensome - scrutiny to conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status. While there is no evidence that Ingram sanctioned or was even aware of the targeting practices, conservatives have cried foul about her new role as head of the IRS' Affordable Care Act office.

Defenders of the administration say that IRS targeting of conservative groups resulted from incompetence, not political malice.  But if IRS employees in general --and Ms. Ingram in particular -- are so incompetent, then prospects for successful implementation of the law are pretty grim.

Political Abuse of the IRS: Excerpts from the 1976 Report

Previous posts have discussed the growing scandal at the IRS.  It has precedents.

In 1976, the Senate's Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities reported on abuse of the Internal Revenue Service. (Click here for the full report).  Excerpts are below.

Pages 53-54:

The IRS program that came to be used against the domestic dissidents of the 1960s was first used against Communists in the 1950s. As part of its COINTELPRO against the Communist Party, the FBI arranged for IRS investigations of Party members, and obtained their tax returns. In its efforts against the Communist Party, the FBI had unlimited access to tax returns: it never told the IRS why it wanted them, and IRS never attempted to find out. In 1961, responding to White House and congressional interest in right-wing organizations, the IRS began comprehensive investigations of right-wing groups to identify contributors and ascertain whether or not some of them were entitled to their tax exempt status.  Left-wing groups were later added, in an effort to avoid charges that such IRS activities were all aimed at one part of the political spectrum. Both right- and left-wing groups were selected for review and investigation because of their political activity and not because of any information that they had violated the tax laws.

While the IRS efforts begun in 1961 to investigate the political activities of tax exempt organizations were not as extensive as later programs in 1969-1973, they were a significant departure by'the IRS from normal enforcement criteria for investigating persons or groups on the basis of information indicating noncompliance. By directing tax audits at individuals and groups solely because of their political beliefs, the Ideological Organizations Audit Project (as the 1961 program was known) established a precedent for a far more elaborate program of targeting "dissidents." 

Page 94-95:

The Special Service Staff: IRS Targeting of Ideological Groups. In 1969, the IRS established a Special Service Staff to gather intelligence on a category of taxpayers defined essentially by political criteria. The SSS attempted to develop tax cases against the targeted taxpayers and initiated tax fraud investigations against some who would otherwise never have been investigated.

The SSS originated as a result of pressure from the permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and from President Nixon, acting through White House assistants Tom Charles Huston and Dr. Arthur Burns.According to the IRS Commissioner's memorandum, Dr. Burns expressed to him the President's concern 

        over the fact that tax-exempt funds may be supporting activist groups engaged in stimulating riots both on the campus and within our inner cities.

The administration did not supply any facts to support the assertion that such groups were violating tax laws.

After the SSS was established, the FBI and the Justice Department's Interdivisional Information Unit (IDIU) became its largest sources of names. An Assistant IRS Commissioner requested the FBI to provide information regarding "various organizations of predominantly dissident or extremist nature and/or people prominently identified within those organizations."  The FBI agreed, believing, as one intelligence official put it, that SSS would "deal a blow" to "dissident elements." 

Among the material received by SSS from the FBI was a list of 2,300 organizations categorized as "Old Left," "New Left," and "Right Wing." The SSS also received about 10,000 names on IDIU computer printouts. SSS opened files on all these taxpayers, many of whom were later subjected to tax audits and some to tax fraud investigations. There is no reason to believe that the names listed by the FBI or the IDIU were selected on the basis of any probable noncompliance with the tax laws. Rather, these groups and individuals were targeted because of their political and ideological beliefs and activities. 

A Very Bad Day for the President

What's the one thing that the Obama administration could do that would alienate the entire press corps?  Brendan Sasso and Jordy Yager write at The Hill:

Federal prosecutors secretly obtained two months' worth of telephone records of Associated Press journalists in what the news agency described Monday as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.”

The Justice Department notified the AP on Friday that it had subpoenaed the records, which included more than 20 office, cellphone and home phone lines. The lines include the general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery.

Juliet Eilperin and Zachary Goldfarb write at The Washington Post:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
...
Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

 Pro Publica discloses:

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.

The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.

In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

The Washington Post gives the president four Pinocchios for his statement on Benghazi:

During the campaign, the president could just get away with claiming he said “act of terror,” since he did use those words — though not in the way he often claimed. It seemed like a bit of after-the-fact spin, but those were his actual words — to the surprise of Mitt Romney in the debate.

But the president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.

Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time--and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.

Targeting Criteria

ABC News has released a portion of the IRS Inspector General's report on the agency's targeting of political groups.  One table lists the evolving criteria for flagging requests:

IRS Political Targeting -- The Story Gets More Serious

The IRS political targeting affair is getting more serious.  AP reports:

Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general's report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.  [See below.]

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog's report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with "Tea Party," ''Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.

...

Lerner instructed agents to change the criteria for flagging groups "immediately," the report says.

The Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong investigation in the coming week. The AP obtained part of the draft report, which has been shared with congressional aides.

Among the other revelations, on Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in the IRS' Rulings and Agreements office "held a meeting with chief counsel so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue."

On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to, "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement," the report says.

On March 22, 2012, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means:

*Chairman Boustany.  One other question.  It has come to my attention and I have gotten a number of letters just recently.  We have seen some recent press allegations that the IRS is targeting certain Tea Party groups across the country requesting what have been described as onerous document requests, delaying approval for tax exempt status, and that kind of thing.    Can you elaborate on what is going on with that?  Can you give us assurances that the IRS is not targeting particular groups based on political leanings?

     *Mr. Shulman.  Thanks for bringing this up.  I think there has been a lot of press about this and a lot of moving information.  I appreciate the opportunity to clarify.
     First, let me start by saying yes, I can give you assurances.  As you know, we pride ourselves on being a non‑political, non‑partisan organization.
     I am the only ‑‑ me and our chief counsel are the only presidential appointees, and I have a five year term that runs through presidential elections, just so we will have none of that kind of political intervention in things we do.
     For 501(c)(4) organizations, which is what has been in the press, organizations do not need to apply for tax exemption.  Organizations can actually hold themselves out as 501(c)(4) organizations and then file a 990 with us.
     The organizations that have been in the press are all ones that are in the application process.  First of all, I think it is very important to emphasize that all of these organizations came in voluntarily.
     They did not need to engage the IRS in a back and forth.  They could have held themselves out, filed a 990, and if we would have seen an issue, we would have engaged, but otherwise, we would not.
     The basic rules around 501(c)(4) organizations are they need to be primarily engaged in promoting the common good and general welfare of their community.  They can be involved in political and campaign activity, but it cannot be their primary purpose.
     When people apply for 501(c)(4) status, what we do is engage them in a number of questions about making sure we understand their primary purpose around this and other sorts of engagement.
     What has been happening has been the normal back and forth that happens with the IRS.  None of the alleged taxpayers, and obviously, I cannot talk about individual taxpayers, and I am not involved in these, are in an examination process.  They are in an application process, which they moved into voluntarily.
     There is absolutely no targeting.  This is the kind of back and forth that happens when people apply for 501(c)(4) status.