IRS To Try Again On Free Speech Stifling Regulation | Our Lawless Administration

Our Lawless Administration

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 15, 2014 Congress is not in session!

USA Today reports, “The Internal Revenue Service is prepared to rewrite a proposed rule regulating the political activities of non-profit groups to address complaints from the right and left that it goes too far, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Monday. ‘In all likelihood we will re-propose a redefined rule and ask for more public comment,’ Koskinen told USA TODAY's Capital Download. It's a process he predicts will take ‘until the end of the year and beyond’ to complete. The proposed regulation of groups known as 501(c)(4)s drew a record 150,000 comments before the deadline in late February. He said the new rule would take into account backlash from conservative Tea Party groups as well as some liberal advocacy organizations that the agency's proposal – intended to address concerns that the tax-exempt groups were engaged in partisan warfare – would bar, even voter education and registration programs.”

The Hill elaborates, “The Internal Revenue Service is poised to take another stab at regulations governing political activities by the type of tax-exempt groups at the center of the agency’s year-old targeting scandal. The decision to revise a draft rule, unveiled in November, follows pressure from congressional Republicans to push the rule back and as the agency pores over an unprecedented number of comments submitted in response to the proposal. . . . The proposed rule, crafted as a response to the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups, would make clear that activities for or against a candidate would not count toward a nonprofit 501(c)(4) group’s stated goal of promoting social welfare. . . . The regulations have come under fire from Republicans, who argue the rules would serve to codify the same brand of targeting that led to the IRS scandal.

“‘It is our view that finalizing this proposed rule would make intimidation and harassment of the administration's political opponents the official policy of the IRS and would allow the Obama administration to use your agency as a partisan tool,’ Speaker John Boehner (Ohio), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other GOP lawmakers wrote in a February letter urging Koskinen to pull the rule back. Koskinen had previously signaled that the IRS would proceed cautiously with the rule. In a speech earlier this month at the National Press Club, Koskinen cited a record 150,000 submissions received during a public comment period.”

It sounds like the commissioner is suggesting that the IRS will go back and try to write this rule again. But the IRS doesn’t need to try again, it needs to stop trying to police free speech.

Speaking on the Senate floor last week, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told Commissioner Koskinen what he needed to do: “[H]onestly, what he really needs to do is stop the IRS from stepping on the First Amendment altogether. He needs to stop this proposed regulation, just as the Secretary of the Treasury told us he could do if he wanted. In fact, the House of Representatives recently voted to halt it too. Remember: Tens of thousands of Americans made their opinions known directly to the IRS about this regulation. It was an unprecedented response, and nearly all of the comments I saw were opposed. The comments came from straight across the political spectrum too.”

Previously McConnell said “[I]t’s easy to see why Americans would be so united in opposition to this regulation. The First Amendment exists to protect political speech. And the government should be doing everything it can to protect that right, not hurt it. . . . [I]f the agency wants to regain trust and return to its true mission, then it’s simply got to get out of the speech regulation business altogether. And the Obama Administration can do that. Look: the Administration ran this idea up the flagpole. It decided in the midst of a historic crisis of public confidence at the IRS to upend more than a half century of practice and rewrite the rules on how Americans could exercise their right to be heard. They asked for comments. And the American people let them know what they thought. So this regulation needs to go. And it needs to go now.”

Yesterday, former presidential candidate and Chairman for the Campaign for Working Families  addressed the Lawlessness of the Administration. "The Obama Administration has a unique approach to law enforcement. Whether or not it enforces a law depends entirely on how it feels about that law. This is a dangerous precedent because it creates tremendous uncertainty for the public and effectively gives the executive branch near dictatorial powers – ignoring laws at a whim and essentially creating new law in the process.

"The evidence is undeniable: the Obama Administration has ignored laws regarding traditional marriage and immigration, and it has waived and changed Obamacare two dozen times. How would Democrats react if a future Republican president decided he disagreed with major portions of the tax code and chose not to enforce it?"

Here's the latest example of the Obama Administration's disrespect for the rule of law: Just as it has done with our immigration law, the Justice Department recently ordered U.S. attorneys to effectively ignore the nation’s drug laws and not object if defense attorneys seek reduced sentences.

As a result, two federal judges who sit on the U.S. Sentencing Commission blasted the administration’s arrogance and lawlessness.

During a commission meeting last week, Judge Ricardo Hinojosa, the commission's vice chair, said:"I have been surprised at the attorney general's steps taken to proceed with this reduction outside of the legal system set up and established by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.  As you all know, the commission in the act is given the authority to promulgate and amend guidelines on a yearly basis. And in the act itself, Congress has preserved its right to reject any potential promulgation of, or amendment to, any guidelines made by the commission itself after the commission has acted.  Meaning that if Congress does not reject a guideline amendment, it will not go into effect until November 1st of this year if we vote in favor of this amendment.

"When the attorney general testified before us, he failed to mention that the night  before, at around 11 pm, the department had ordered all of the assistant U.S. attorneys across the country to (and it's not clear to me whether it was supposed to be not oppose or to argue for, in fact the U.S. attorneys in front of my court have said they've been asked to argue for) the two-level reduction in all drug trafficking cases before the commission has acted and before Congress has had the opportunity to vote its disapproval of the commission's actions, if Congress is so inclined, which is certainly the right that they have preserved for themselves in the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.

"It would have been nice for us to have known and been told beforehand that this action had been taken, so any of us who would have liked to have asked the attorney general under what basis under Title 18...the courts were being asked by the Justice Department to follow this request.  If it was because the attorney general had spoken in favor of this proposal, that is a dangerous precedent because attorney generals in the past have consistently expressed opinions to the commission on guideline promulgation and amendments, many times for an increase, and sometimes for a lowering of the penalties.  But none have ever then asked the courts to proceed with increases or decreases simply because the attorney general has spoken in support of them before the commission has acted and before the Congress has exercised its statutory right not to act."Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Judge Hinojosa, saying:"That unprecedented instruction disrespected our statutory role 'as an independent commission in the judicial branch' to establish sentencing policies and practices under the Sentencing Reform Act and the role of Congress, as the legislative branch, to decide whether to revise, modify, or disapprove our proposed amendment.  We do not discharge our statutory duty until we vote on a proposed amendment, and Congress, by law, has until November 1st to decide whether our proposed amendment should become effective. The law provides the executive no authority to establish national sentencing policies based on speculation about how we and Congress might vote on a proposed amendment."Whatever one thinks about the "war on drugs," a more important debate concerns whether America is going to follow the rule of law or the rule of men.

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