“GOP Chases Fake IRS Scandal, But Makes The Real One Worse”: Republicans Need Look No Further Than Their Own Budget Proposals
With the exception of the 2012 Benghazi attacks, no Obama-era controversy has animated Republican imaginations quite like the one surrounding the Internal Revenue Service.
Congressional Republicans’ version of the scandal originally went like this: President Obama ordered the IRS to target right-wing organizations applying for tax-exempt status as non-political “social welfare” groups, leading the agency to harass those on the president’s Nixonian enemies list.
It turns out that none of that ever happened; the IRS targeted liberal groups as well as conservative ones, not a single Tea Party group was denied tax-exempt status (despite overwhelming evidence that many of them were engaged in political activity), and no evidence ever emerged that the White House was involved in any of it. Still, that hasn’t stopped Republicans from escalating the “scandal” in increasingly ridiculous ways.
The current outrage centers around the IRS’ claim that thousands of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s emails were lost when her computer crashed in 2011. Although evidence and logic suggest that this was not part of a massive cover-up, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is threatening to impeach Attorney General Eric Holder unless he appoints a special prosecutor to investigate it, and Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Bill Flores (R-TX) have introduced a bill promising a $1 million bounty to anyone who can restore the lost emails, while threatening to cut the salaries of IRS employees by 20 percent unless the emails are recovered.
As it happens, Republicans have already hammered IRS employees with cuts since they took control of the House of Representatives in 2011 — and they didn’t even need a “Nixonian” “scandal” to do so.
In a report released Wednesday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities illustrates just how badly Congress has constrained the IRS’ ability to do its job. Due to a combination of discretionary budget cuts and sequestration, the IRS has been left with an $11.3 billion budget for 2014. That’s $840 million lower than it was in 2010, amounting to a 14 percent cut when accounting for inflation.
As a result of the cuts, the IRS has been forced to reduce its workforce by 11 percent since 2010, even as the agency’s workload has substantially increased (for example, in addition to the IRS’ new campaign finance responsibilities, CBPP notes that the number of individual tax returns has grown by 1.5 million annually over the past decade).
Furthermore, even as the IRS’ remaining workers have been forced to take on more responsibility, the agency’s training budget has been slashed by an astonishing 87 percent between 2010 and 2013, the most recent year with available data. If Congress wants to know why the IRS struggled so badly at sorting out the glut of groups that applied for tax exemption, there is your answer.
President Obama’s 2015 budget would reverse the rapid slide in the IRS’ funding; it would increase the agency’s budget by $1.2 billion from this year’s level, returning it to roughly its 2010 level (before adjusting for inflation).
The House appropriations subcommittee wants to go further in the other direction, however; it has proposed cutting IRS funding by yet another $340 billion. This is especially illogical considering the GOP majority’s supposed desire to limit the budget deficit. According to the Treasury Department, each $1 spent on the IRS budget yields $4 of revenue.
“Policymakers should give the IRS sufficient resources to carry out its mission,” the CBPP paper concludes. “In particular, policymakers who profess to be concerned or even alarmed about the nation’s current or future fiscal course should provide the IRS with the funding it needs to administer the nation’s tax laws and collect taxes due under the laws of the land.”
CBPP is not the first to sound the alarm over the IRS’ lack of funding; The National Memo’s David Cay Johnston made a similar argument in 2013, at the height of the “targeting” controversy.
Republicans are clearly desperate to uncover a real scandal at the IRS. But if they really want to improve things at the much-maligned agency, they need look no further than their own budget proposals.
By: Henry Decker, The National memo, June 27, 2014
“About Those New Lois Lerner Emails…”: As With Previous “Smoking Guns”, The Truth Is Not Nearly So Outrageous
If the Ways and Means investigation into Lois Lerner had really and truly uncovered a “push to audit Senator Chuck Grassley,” then the Republican Party might finally have had the scandal it was so sure it would eventually find.
Yet as with previous smoking guns in the never-ended Internal Revenue Service story, the truth is not nearly so outrageous.
The supposed targeting of Tea Party groups actually involved keyword searches that included liberal groups, as well. And the supposed “push” was actually more of an aborted nudge.
Here’s what happened. Ms. Lerner received an invitation to an event intended for Mr. Grassley. Ms. Lerner sent an email to a colleague, Matthew Giuliano, wondering if the invitation were kosher, and asked if the issue should be referred for examination. The colleague suggested it should not, and Ms. Lerner backed off.
You can read the full e-mail exchange here. Or read an excerpt below:
Lerner: Is this the one where we got the copy to Grassley? Did he get one to me? Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?
Giuliano: It is, and yes. Your and Grassley’s invitations were placed in each other’s envelopes. Not sure we should send to exam. I think the offer to pay for Grassley’s wife is income to Grassley, and not prohibited on its face … We would need to wait for: (i) Grassley to accept and attend the speaking arrangement; and (ii) then determine whether [blacked out] issues him a 1099. And even without the 1099, it would be Grassley who would need to report the income on his 1040.
Lerner: Thanks — don’t know why I thought it was a [blacked out] — maybe answer would be the same. Don’t think I want to be on stage with Grassley on this issue.
Ms. Lerner was maybe a little too eager to investigate Mr. Grassley, but once her colleague suggested there probably wasn’t any wrongdoing, she didn’t “push” or shove or anything of the sort. If we’re looking for a physical metaphor, what she did was turn around and walk away.
By: Juliet Lapidos, Taking Note, The Editors Blog, The New York Times, June 26, 2014
“The Battle For Freedom”: A Brand Name Conservatives Use To Fill Their Own Ideals
Just over four years ago, The Democratic Strategist (a site where I’m managing editor) and the think tank Demos cosponsored an online forum entitled “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom.” We did so in the growing fear that the radicalized conservative movement and its vehicle, the Republican Party, were in danger of reinterpreting and distorting the powerful American value of “freedom” in a way that undermined (very deliberately) most of the great accomplishments of the twentieth century and promoted the interests of wealthy elites.
It’s probably safe to say that progressives are still on the uphill climb in that battle.
For historical ammunition, check out the review of Harvey Kaye’s The Fight for the Four Freedoms by the Century Foundation’s Moshe Marvit, in the new issue of the Washington Monthly.
Kaye’s account covers the formulation of the Four Freedoms as including “freedom from want,” the huge influence it had on the world view of the “greatest generation,” and the vigorous backlash from conservatives ever since.
On this last topic, it’s important to understand that the Tea Party’s dogma of “freedom” meaning strict and eternal limits on government has a very old provenance, even if you exclude its many pre-New-Deal exponents. Here’s Marvit’s quick summary:
Since the Four Freedoms were an important source of radical change—especially once Roosevelt used them in arguing for an economic bill of rights—they were regarded as dangerous by many conservatives. So, taking the advice of Walter Fuller of the National Association of Manufacturers, conservatives and business leaders wasted no time in co-opting Roosevelt’s principles for their own ends. They did this through a process of appending and supplanting. First, the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce passed what they termed the “Fifth Freedom,” the opportunity of free enterprise, arguing that without it the other freedoms were “meaningless.” Similarly, Republican Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts presented a congressional resolution to add the freedom of private enterprise as the Fifth Freedom. Liberals timidly backed away from the radical view embodied in the Four Freedoms, allowing it to be disfigured and contorted. In time the idea became an empty vessel, a brand name, which conservatives used to fill with their own ideals. This transformation was apparent by 1987, when President Ronald Reagan announced his plan to enact an “Economic Bill of Rights that guarantees four fundamental freedoms: The freedom to work. The freedom to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. The freedom to own and control one’s property. The freedom to participate in a free market.”
The only real difference between Reagan’s approach to freedom and that of his “constitutional conservative” successors is that the latter clearly want to rule out a positive role in economic life for government forever, as a matter of constitutional law and (for most of them) Divine Edict. So in trying to reclaim “freedom” as a positive value, progressives are fighting against a new breed of reactionaries who are truly playing for keeps.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington MOnthly Political Animal, June 26, 2014
“Snyder’s Insulting Redskins Logic”: Irrational Insistance That Native Americans Are Somehow Being Honored
Fear not for the future of free speech after the Washington Redskins’ trademark fight. The legal dividend could be more free speech, not less.
A lot of my fellow First Amendment advocates sound nervous about cancellation of the Washington pro football team’s trademark by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this past week.
Even among those who sharply disagree with team owner Dan Snyder, who irrationally insists that Native Americans somehow are honored by a word that major English dictionaries call “insulting” and “usually offensive,” there is widespread concern that the patent office is deciding what trademarks are “disparaging” to Native Americans or anyone else.
The decision can’t force the NFL team to change its name, but it could hit Snyder in his wallet.
If the ruling stands up in court, he could lose the right to block other companies from selling caps, cups, jerseys and other merchandise with the name and Indian head logo.
Critics see that potential penalty as an infringement on Snyder’s First Amendment rights.
Yet, viewed another way, the decision can be seen as an expansion of everyone else’s right to do what the government’s trademark allowed only Snyder to do.
Sometimes government not only is allowed but obligated to decide what is not only legal but also proper. The states, for example, routinely ban certain words, numbers or names from vanity license plates that they view as obscene or insulting.
A Santa Fe man, for example, unhappily lost his New Mexico vanity license plate in 2012 after state officials declared its message, “IB6UB9,” to be unacceptably naughty.
But we have courts to temper such judgments. The New Hampshire Supreme Court in May overruled state workers who rejected a request for “COPSLIE,” according to news reports. State regulations allowed for vanity plates to be denied if they were deemed “offensive to good taste.” (This particular request, I would add, also violates good sense.)
All states bar plates that are “obscene, lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic group, or patently offensive,” according to Stefan Lonce, author of “LCNS2ROM: Vanity License Plates and the GR8 Stories They Tell.”
Similarly, the federal patent office is allowed to reject applications for trademarks that are disparaging to particular racial, ethnic or religious groups.
That’s why a federal appellate court in May upheld the patent office’s refusal of a trademark to the website titled “Stop! Islamization of America.” Although the owners contend the website only opposed “political Islamization” and not the Islamic faith, the court ruled, “The (patent office) board disagreed, as do we.”
Yet it is hard to see where the group’s free speech rights have been infringed. Their website and Facebook pages remain online. So do Web pages by civil rights and anti-hate organizations that oppose the group’s positions.
Snyder similarly remains free to use his team’s name, if the revocation sticks, but so can anyone else. He only loses certain government protections, such as preventing other users of the team name from selling or exporting team souvenirs and presumably cutting into his profits.
Of course, the Redskins’ name has seniority, as its defenders point out. The team has been using it since the 1930s. But words do change in their meanings and implications over time.
I am reminded of how tea party protesters used to display tea bags on signs and used “tea bagging” to describe their anti-tax protests in early 2009, until liberal commentators made a mockery of the verb.
As a sign of respect for the right of people to be called what they want to be called, I stopped using the term to refer to the movement after an avalanche of emails expressed outrage over the “obscene slur.”
Yet, I have been dismayed to hear some — although certainly not all — of the same people who were angrily offended by that T-word unable to understand why Native Americans are similarly offended by the R-word.
That’s why I am not very upset that the patent office decided to cancel the Washington football team’s trademark. I am only disappointed that the government had to be asked.
By: Clarence Page, Member, Editorial Board; The Chicago Tribune, June 22, 2014
“No, Eric Cantor Did Not Lose Because He’s Jewish”: There Were No Other Elephants In The Room
Eric Cantor’s primary defeat by David Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, sent the pundits scurrying. Shocked and bewildered, they searched around for theories to makes sense of what they had not anticipated happening. Hundreds of articles were written and dozens of explanations were offered.
One of the more fascinating threads that emerged from the cacophony of ideas put forward in the days following the primary was the effort to find a Jewish dimension to the story. Cantor, the House Majority Leader, was the highest ranking Jewish lawmaker in American history, with aspirations to be Speaker of the House. When one adds to that the fact that Brat is a religious Christian who speaks frequently of his faith, the temptation to uncover a Jewish angle became irresistible. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the leading Jewish weekly the Forward, and a variety of other publications duly turned out articles examining, from every perspective, the Jewish and religious sides of the election.
The problem was that there was no Jewish angle, at least not one of any consequence.
David Wasserman, a normally sensible political analyst, got things going with a much-quoted statement to the Times suggesting that anti-Semitism was at play in Cantor’s defeat. Cantor was culturally out of step with his redrawn district, according to Wasserman, “and part of this plays into his religion. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room.” Sensationalist headlines soon followed. The Week, a news magazine, ran a story entitled “Did Eric Cantor lose because he’s Jewish?” And the Forward ran an opinion column with the headline “Did Eric Cantor Lose Because He’s Jewish? You Betcha.”
But there was no elephant in the room. There wasn’t even a mosquito in the room. Nobody could turn up a single statement or piece of literature coming from the Brat campaign or anyone else that was even remotely anti-Semitic. And sensationalism aside, the ultimate consensus of virtually everyone was that anti-Semitism was not a factor of any kind in Cantor’s loss.
Conservatives, including Jewish conservatives, cried foul, charging that the point of the coverage was a deliberate attempt by liberals to smear Republican voters as bigots. Perhaps, although my own view is that it reflected media sloppiness and obsessiveness more than political conspiracy.
Another claim was that even in the absence of explicit anti-Semitism, the Brat victory represented a victory for evangelicalism and Christian politics and therefore a long-term threat to Jews and all non-Christian minorities. Vigilance about church-state separation is always appropriate, of course, but it is hard to see the threat here. Brat is often described as aligned with the Tea Party, which is a motley collection of organizations and activists; it has ill-defined religious positions not at all identical with those of evangelical groups, which are diverse themselves. Most important, there is much evidence that Americans are becoming less religious and not more so, and, as the gay marriage issue demonstrates, more tolerant in their religious outlooks.
Mr. Brat, of course, likes to talk publicly of his belief in God, and that is distressing to some people, both Jews and Christians. But God talk is acceptable in America, and people with liberal religious outlooks, President Obama included, also make reference to their religious beliefs from time to time. The key for politicians is to be sure that they ground their statements in a language of morality that is accessible to everyone; Americans need a common political discourse not dominated by exclusivist theology. As long as Brat—and others—stay on the right side of that political line, there is no reason to see this election as a religious watershed for Jews or anyone else, or a victory for religious coercion.
A third claim is that the Cantor defeat represents a disastrous decline of Jewish political fortunes. In this view, Cantor’s defeat is seen as part of a broader pattern: There are 33 Jews in the current Congress, both the House and the Senate, as compared with 39 in the previous one. But here again, this seems like an altogether arbitrary and unfounded assumption. Jews are well represented in all areas of America’s educational, business, and political life, and that is not changed in any way by the defeat of a Jewish Majority Leader in the House of Representatives.
Eric Cantor’s fall from political power is interesting and in some ways important. For decades to come, politicians and professors will study it as an example of what happens when a serious but self-referential politician loses touch with the things that ordinary Americans care about and gets caught up in the big-dollar culture of Washington. But they will say very little about the Jewish dimension of this affair—and that is for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist.
By: Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, a Writer and Lecturer, was President of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012; Time, June 16, 2014
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