The House Ways and Means Committee heard testimony Tuesday from multiple leaders of grassroots conservative groups who were heavily scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service when they applied for tax-exempt status and also began to hear the first Democratic contentions that the congressional investigation is now political.
Several leaders of liberty-oriented groups and Tea Party organizations told lawmakers about the intrusive, exhaustive questions imposed by the IRS, often after months of hearing nothing about their applications and often with only a couple of weeks to comply with all the demands for information. Questions focused on donors, the background of all people affiliated with the groups (including children) and detailed requests for politically-related literature, whether any leaders ever planned to run for public office and even the content of group prayers.
“These people are victims in my opinion and what I found most striking in their testimony was the fact that they were just shocked, surprised, amazed – I don’t know what other adjectives you could use to describe the feelings they had when the IRS came back with questions,” said Washington Rep. Dave Reichert, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee who gained attention for his dogged questioning of IRS officials at previous hearings in his pursuit for specific people responsible for the IRS policies.
“When you watch Americans come in and testify in a hearing like this and the government is prying into your life to the point the IRS has done in this case, to hear it testified to verbally, out loud by the people affected who were the victims was, I think, absolutely striking today,” said Reichert, who believes there are still more conservative groups and donors who have not come forward because they still feel threatened by the government.
Reichert says he is getting information from organizations in his district that simply don’t want to call attention to themselves. He asked the attorney for one of Tuesday’s witnesses how far-reaching the scandal goes. He says the attorney claimed to have 25 clients now and expected many more to seek counsel.
Democrats had expressed great frustration and outrage at IRS officials last month for failing to remember countless details and not having any idea who was ultimately responsible for this. On Tuesday, the tone changed. Democrats contend there was no political aspect to this IRS policy that can be traced to high-ranking officials. Washington Rep. Jim McDermott lashed out at the Tea Party leaders for expecting no scrutiny from the government for their politically-related activities, expecting taxpayers to fund their work and offering no suggestions for questions are appropriate. Reichert says McDermott was way off base.
“There’s two points really that I think Mr. McDermott was incorrect in,” said Rechert. “The 501 (c) 4 contributions are not tax deductible, so no one’s looking for a tax deduction when they form the 501 (c) 4’s. People do expect to be held accountable. They expect to answer questions from the IRS regarding their status but not to the degree that these folks testified to.
“Second, this is not about politics. What Mr. McDermott fails to clearly understand here, and I think some of our other Democratic colleagues made similar statements today, is that this is an issue that has already been decided by the Supreme Court. This is the law of the land,” said Reichert, who says Democrats need to abide by decisions they don’t agree with just as Republicans strongly disagree with last year’s Obamacare ruling.
Reichert says there really haven’t been any major consequences for this abuse of Americans’ rights, although he is somewhat encouraged that he and California Rep. Devin Nunes were able to draw several names from the witnesses who were involved in the targeting of conservative groups. He says to expect those figures to be called before Congress soon.