March 5^th

“Tough to stop the IRS and its lawlessness” is the title of George Will’s column today. The IRS has been a favorite whipping boy ever since its existence began with the passing of sixteenth amendment in 1913. Much of the whipping was well deserved…and some of it wasn’t.

Will continues to demonize Lois Lerner, a thirty year government employee, who was effectively terminated May 22^nd 2013. On that date she was given a box, told to clean out her desk and was escorted out of the building by security. She was supposed to testify before a congressional committee, took the Fifth Amendment, and was thus presumed guilty and sent packing. George Will continues to pile on the invective.

So what’s this all about? It’s primarily about the 401(3) (c) designation for organizations. This designation allows contributors to the organization to get a tax deduction for their contributions. If you contribute to a political party you get no tax advantage, but if the organization is a 401c3 designated charity, a deduction for contributions is allowed. Of course such organizations can engage in “educational activities,” in voter registration efforts and in other equivalent activities but they cannot engage in pushing partisan legislation or in “education” favoring a particular candidate for office.

Many churches have this designation but some denominations are indignant that they cannot advocate for candidates favorably disposed toward their theological views. They claim that this prohibition violates their various constitutional guarantees. It doesn’t. It just offers a choice; they can be either a charitable institution or they can be a political advocacy group. They can’t be both so they complain about it.

In the case of Ms. Lerner we have a bureaucrat who held up the approval of organizations with Tea Party, Conservative, or other right wing political indicators in their applications but approved applications from liberal groups. I have a problem here: If this 401(3) (c) designation is supposed to be only for groups not pushing a political agenda then why should either group get approval?

The task of investigating and approving these organizations was not all done by Ms. Lerner; some of it was undertaken by other people in her organization of 900 people.  All of them had to be trained. Unfortunately the Congress in its infinite wisdom cut the training budget by 96% effectively eliminating it. As a result all of the excrement is dumped on Ms. Lerner’s head. She now, some years later still gets threatening hate mail as does her 86 year old mother. She is unemployable although she has the good fortune to have a substantial government pension. George Will believes that she should be prosecuted and laments that the statute of limitations will soon run out eliminating that possibility.