Darth Issa: Lord Vader, the IRS has not provided me information on everything the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee has asked for. They must be fearing the Dark Side of the Force.
Darth Vader: I find their lack of faith disturbing.
We can only assume Darrell Issa will hound at anything likely or unlikely in order to get information to make his case on why the IRS appears to be politically motivated:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
WASHINGTON — A GOP lawmaker accused the Internal Revenue Service of obstructing congressional investigations into the agency's targeting of tea party groups, a charge the head of the IRS denied.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the IRS has been slow in producing documents that are so thoroughly blacked out they are useless to investigators.
Issa said he plans to bypass IRS lawyers and will subpoena documents directly from the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS.
"You are slow-rolling us," Issa told acting IRS head Danny Werfel in a heated exchange during a committee hearing Friday. "There are important facts to get out, and you are obstructing."
"That is not true," Werfel fired back.
Werfel said that by the end of the day Friday, the IRS will have given more than 16,000 pages of documents to Issa's committee and more than 70,000 pages to Congress as a whole. Werfel said documents are blacked out to protect confidential taxpayer information.
Now pay VERY close attention to how Darrell Issa is flipping out and clearly not understanding that within the IRS, information comes as is and continues to be provided according to requests by the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee and House Ways & Means Committee.
And point of reference, Darrell Issa only seems to be frustrated it appears because acting IRS Chief Danny Werfel is not speaking his language.
However, the good news for Issa is that he doesn't have to deal with Werfel anymore seeing as President Obama is nominating a new commissioner to take over Werfel's place.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The White House on Thursday announced that President Obama would nominate John Koskinen, who oversaw the government’s preparations for Y2K and helped lead Freddie Mac out of the financial crisis, to head the embattled Internal Revenue Service.
“John is an expert at turning around institutions in need of reform,” Obama said in a statement. “I am confident that John will do whatever it takes to restore the public’s trust in the agency.”
Also, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has already given high marks for Werfel in reforming and strengthening the IRS in the interim while he, President Obama and others have worked to come up with a more permanent placement for IRS Commissioner.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Lew also commended Werfel for his work putting the IRS on a stronger footing after the targeting controversy, which led to a host of personnel moves, a top-to-bottom internal review, congressional investigations and a Justice Department probe. “He has improved the agency’s operations, and he has paved the way so that the IRS can meet its fundamental obligation to provide fair, high-quality service to taxpayers,” the treasury director said.
Now you could agree or disagree with the choice of John Koskinen, the official nominee to become the next IRS Commissioner, but there are several questions that remain:
1) Is John Koskinen, if confirmed, going to be a better IRS Commissioner than current acting IRS Chief Danny Werfel?
2) Will anything change for the IRS investigation?
3) Will information be provided to all the pertinent committees involved in investigating the IRS matter (House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, House Ways & Means Committee, etc.) the way Issa and others in the GOP want or can the information only be submitted according to the processes and procedures within the IRS?
My best answer to the following questions:
Answer to #1: I don't know although there's a high probability things will stay the same as is with the IRS seeing as the IRS already has provided a lot of what has been needed as a means of cooperating with this investigation.
Answer to #2: That's uncertain at this point in my view. It's a matter of wait-and-see at this point. I don't know much about John Koskinen but I'm sure you fellow Kossacks and other readers know more than I do about him.
Answer to #3: Unless there's political motives coming from within the IRS (and no real proof has been provided that there is), I'm not sure how the IRS is going to be able to speed up the information providing process than its already doing. I don't know the operations within the IRS. I'm sure there's quite a bureaucracy within the IRS but of course, that doesn't mean we can't work to make it better.
One thing is for sure. Issa is as an Issa does.
Meanwhile, Darrell Issa has deflected President Obama's statement that these "scandals," as others in the GOP have aptly put the label as, are phony.
One thing Issa doesn't know is that if something is broken in government, if there's insufficient information or inconsistency in how a government responds, that's not necessarily a scandal. A scandal like Watergate became a scandal when it was revealed, via REAL facts, that there was corruption within the Nixon administration and the White House.
With the IRS, it's not a scandal so much anymore but an issue, at least so far as reported. It's more of a procedure, operations and classification problem, at least from what I've come to understand. Of course, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed. It MUST.
So what reason does Mr. Issa have in getting so emotional all the time in the IRS investigation?
Oh but that's because he is partisan. And he still is only focusing on the targeting of conservatives in the IRS "scandal." Nothing else.
Just look at the Twitter tweets flow from Issa!
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If you can't stand to hear more of Darrell Issa's antics, keep the San Diego County Democratic Party busy since they're the most local and active Democratic Party nearby Darrell Issa's area of residence (not to mention his local office).
Make sure you mark down this information and pass it on to others for firing up the base in California's 49th Congressional District if you want to target Issa for re-election and get voter registration drives going. If you can find someone in the CA-49 who can run against Issa in 2014, the more the merrier:
San Diego County Democratic Party Website: http://www.sddemocrats.org/
Address: 8340 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, Suite 10 San Diego, CA 92111
Phone: (858) 277-3367
Fax: (858) 571-0275
E-mail: info@sddemocrats.org
Contact Form: http://www.sddemocrats.org/...
Oh and don't forget, the DCCC could use some action as well: (202) 863-1500
