Republicans say control of the Senate will allow them to accomplish what Darrell Issa could not.
For the past 18 months, hardly a day has gone by without a Republican on Capitol Hill making some wild allegation about the Obama administration conspiring to use the IRS as a political weapon against tea party groups. The only thing that's been missing: Any evidence whatsoever that there was such a conspiracy.
But Republicans say that would change if only they were given complete control of Congress, reports The Hill:
“Most of the oversight has, frankly, been taking place in the House,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of the IRS’s most consistent critics in Congress, told The Hill.
“You’re going to have more eyes looking at this issue, potentially twice as many hearings happening,” Jordan added. “That gives you that much more opportunity to get to the truth, in spite of the fact that the administration is not cooperating.”
I'll concede that the House has spent far more time than the Senate when it comes to trying to uncover evidence to support their conspiracy theory, but the Senate has also investigated the matter. The biggest difference: Senate Democrats believe that the lack of any evidence of a White House conspiracy means there was no conspiracy, while House Republicans think it proves that the conspiracy is even bigger than they first imagined.
We already know the truth, which is that Congress has given the IRS responsibility for determining whether political groups should receive tax-exempt status or not. As I'm sure the IRS would be first to say, putting them in charge of overseeing campaign finance regulations isn't the greatest idea in the world, but that's what Congress did. And if Congress wants to change that, it's up to them to take action.
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Instead of heading down that path, House Republicans are itching for more political theater, not just when it comes to investigating the IRS, but also passing message bills on everything from eroding the IRS's ability to determine whether political groups are legally entitled to tax-exempt status to barring IRS employees from using personal email accounts for business purposes.
Since nothing would be complete without a bit of Obamacare hysteria, they also want to investigate how the IRS handles the individual mandate. In the abstract, that seems like a perfectly reasonably idea, but just wait until the GOP gets its hands on it—we'll probably have hearings about how the White House is using the IRS to deny Obamacare to tea partiers.
Of course, they might so busy trying to uncover President Obama's role in the secret IRS plot to destroy the tea party that they forget about everything else. The only thing that's for sure is that if they do take over total control of Congress, we're going to be hearing a lot more insane stuff about the IRS for the next two years.