Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings says it’s time to stop investigating the latest IRS shenanigans. According to him, closed-door interviews with IRS staffers prove that no White House or other Washington officials were involved in targeting the applications for tax-exempt status of conservative groups for special obstructionist attention.
Whew! Crisis over.
But the congressman is ignoring a few things.
For example, history. Everything we are now learning (visit TaxProf Blog for the latest news roundups) indicates that this latest shocking scandal only confirms what we already knew about the Internal Revenue Service. The outfit does not play nice. It is not animated by unwavering concern for truth, justice, and even-handed enforcement of its welter of wretched regulations.
More immediately, the congressman is ignoring the fact that the IRS’s ideological targeting is not resolvable into the actions of one or two frazzled clerks in Cincinnati. (Even if some reporters have valiantly striven to show, in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, “How One Overworked IRS Worker Ignited the Tea-Party Targeting Scandal.”)
We know that many DC-based officials linked to the targeting of conservative groups quit, were transferred, or were put on administrative leave right after the scandal broke. We know that IRS employees in Cincinnati have testified that the DC office especially requested Tea Party files. We know that DC lawyers both reviewed the intrusive questionnaires sent to Tea Party groups and drafted many of the questions. Etc. All irrelevant?
Come on, Cummings.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.