In the News
Roll Call: IRS Scandal Spurs Overdue Debate on Agency’s Regulations
By Eliza Newlin Carney
At least now, the nation is wading into a long-overdue public debate over where such lines should be drawn. It’s a question that urgently needs settling now that the Supreme Court has unleashed a flood of new election-minded tax-exempt groups with its 2010 ruling to deregulate political spending. These organizations operate outside the normal Federal Election Commission disclosure rules.Some of the ideas now being tossed about may not get very far. It would be a heavy lift to strip all campaign finance enforcement away from the IRS, for example, and hand it over to the FEC — as Center for Competitive Politics President David Keating recently recommended to the Ways and Means Committee.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: David Rivkin and Lee Casey: The IRS and the Drive to Stop Free Speech
By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND LEE A. CASEYThere is nothing inherently evil about anonymous political speech. It is firmly anchored in our political and legal culture and was used by the Framers during the founding. Hamilton, Madison and Jay published their Federalist Papers under a pseudonym. The fact that the IRS was able to target conservative donors—similar to the way donors to the NAACP were targeted at the height of the civil-rights battles—shows how disclosure can lead to speech-suppressing government actions.The courts have long held that the IRS cannot use subjective, “value-laden” tests in administering nonprofit status. As the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stated in one leading case, Big Mama Rag, Inc. v. United States (1980): “although First Amendment activities need not be subsidized by the state, the discriminatory denial of tax exemptions can impermissibly infringe free speech.”The proper lessons of the unfolding IRS scandal are twofold. First, any effort to have the IRS police advocacy activities of social-welfare organizations is bound to be clumsy and prone to degenerate into either selective or broad witch hunts. Second, the remedy is not to further limit political speech by nonprofit entities—which would certainly raise significant constitutional issues—but to encourage such speech by imposing fewer restrictions.
LA Times: Top IRS official will invoke 5th Amendment
By Richard Simon and Joseph TanfaniTaylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year.Since Lerner won’t answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” There was no immediate word whether the committee will grant her request.
Daily Caller: IRS targeted conservative college interns
By Patrick HowleyThe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demanded information about conservative groups’ college-aged interns, prompting outrage from one of the country’s top conservative activist organizations and leading one former intern to wonder whether his family’s pizza parlor would be endangered.
Wall Street Journal: IRS Chiefs Dispute Senators’ Allegations
By SIOBHAN HUGHES, DAMIAN PALETTA and MICHAEL CRITTENDENTestifying before the Senate Finance Committee, former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, who was in charge when the targeting began in the agency’s Cincinnati office, and acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who took the top job last year and is now departing, said they didn’t know about the IRS’s practice of targeting conservative groups right away. When they found out in 2012, they said, they didn’t tell Congress immediately because they couldn’t be sure they had all the facts.Senators reacted with outrage, fueled by a sense that the IRS officials weren’t being forthcoming.
Disclosure
The Nation: The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks
The Nation: The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks
By Ken SilversteinCAP doesn’t publicly disclose the members of its Business Alliance, but I obtained multiple internal lists from 2011 showing that dozens of major corporations had joined. The lists were prepared by Chris Belisle, who at the time served as the alliance’s senior manager after having been recruited from his prior position as manager of corporate relations at the US Chamber of Commerce. According to these lists, CAP’s donors included Comcast, Walmart, General Motors, Pacific Gas and Electric, General Electric, Boeing and Lockheed. Though it doesn’t appear on the lists, the University of Phoenix was also a donor.Incidentally, Scott Lilly, a Hill veteran who joined CAP in 2004 as a senior fellow covering national security, simultaneously served as a registered lobbyist for Lockheed between 2005 and 2011. Rudy deLeon, CAP’s senior vice president for national security and international policy, was a Boeing executive and directed the company’s lobbying operations between 2001 and 2006, before joining the think tank the following year.
Candidates, Politicians and Parties
Politico: White House IRS timeline shifts again
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN and REID J. EPSTEINThe White House’s explanation of what it knew about the investigation into the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative political groups and how it planned for the eventual release of that information shifted once again Tuesday.Just a day after telling reporters that chief of staff Denis McDonough and other senior White House staff learned of the situation nearly a month ago, press secretary Jay Carney revealed Tuesday that White House officials had consulted with the Treasury Department on how to make the findings public.
Lobbying and Ethics
Las Vegas Review-Journal: A fine, but no more justice for John Ensign
By Steve SebeliusThese days, Ensign has resumed his veterinary practice in Summerlin. But he recently agreed to pay a $32,000 fine to the Federal Election Commission after a general counsel’s investigation found that payments to his mistress — made by Ensign’s parents, Mike and Sharon — constituted a violation of campaign finance laws.
State and Local
Minnesota –– MPR: Tougher disclosure rules dropped from campaign finance bill
By Catharine Richert
The language was dropped in the waning hours of the legislative session over Republican concerns, said Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, and chief sponsor of the House legislation.The GOP said it would withdraw support for a separate elections bill if the controversial disclosure provisions were preserved in conference committee, Winkler said. Gov. Mark Dayton said he would not sign the elections bill unless it had bipartisan support.
