Take action to stop IRS intimidation now.
Photo Credit: Bobby Jindal’s Official Flickr Account
By Governor Bobby Jindal
They’re baaa-aack…
Less than a year after the Internal Revenue Service was caught red-handed engaged in a political witch-hunt against Tea Party groups, your friendly IRS is at it again. This time it’s proposing that non-profit groups disclose their member lists to Washington bureaucrats.
Sounds like a fine idea—at least in theory. Who’s against transparency, and what do the non-profits have to hide?
As with many things associated with the Obama Administration, there’s a big catch. The IRS could easily use those donor lists to engage in harassment and intimidation against those who disagree with the Administration’s liberal agenda.
And Sen. Chuck Schumer wants the Administration to do just that. Complaining that Tea Party and other conservative groups have an electoral advantage, he recently suggested that “there are many things that can be done administratively by the IRS and other government agencies—we must redouble those efforts immediately.”
That’s another way of telling conservative organizations to look out—more Chicago-style tactics are on the way. Conservative groups can either self-censor their constitutional right to free speech, or open themselves—and their members—to political retaliation once their membership lists are disclosed.
Freedom-loving organizations everywhere have tried to raise the alarm about this new IRS dragnet. The National Rifle Association called the proposal “a blatant abuse of the tax code designed to muzzle the American people’s free speech rights.” This “blatant abuse” is also very ironic: Having systematically attempted to undermine the Second Amendment, the Obama Administration is now looking to undermine the First Amendment as well.
Of course, the real problem isn’t that the IRS doesn’t have enough authority to harass conservative organizations—the problem is that IRS bureaucrats have too much power already. The investigations against IRS employees harassing Tea Party groups have stalled, perhaps because an Obama campaign donor was put in charge of the investigation. And the IRS has even started hectoring one of the few conservative groups in the entertainment industry to fork over its member list—maybe because President Obama thinks Hollywood isn’t liberal enough for him.
Lately, President Obama has been bragging that he has “a phone and a pen,” and can implement all sorts of unilateral actions without Congress’ consent. Well, Congress has its own tool—“the power of the purse”—that it can use to block this latest IRS attempt at a partisan fishing expedition. And Congress should act—because millions of Americans’ privacy is at stake.
