gracchusdixit

The noisy, nearly hysterical rhetoric surrounding IRS scrutiny of conservative 501(c)(4) organizations has all but drowned out the essential question at issue: whether the scrutiny was justified in the first place.

From the first instant this brouhaha got underway, it has been almost universally assumed, without proof or evidence, that the decision to scrutinize organizations with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their names was made for explicitly political reasons, either by overzealous bureaucrats in the IRS wishing to please the administration in power or, more sinisterly, by the administration itself.

This facile assumption has been a convenient godsend for Republicans in Congress, who would dearly love to compromise and embarrass a President whose reelection they still cannot abide.  The only thing they would love better is to impeach the man before his second term has a chance to run its course, just as they tried to do to Bill Clinton.

Easy assumptions, however, are not the same thing as reality.  That the organizations flagged for scrutiny happen to be “conservative” does not mean that the scrutiny was politically motivated.  There is another possibility, one that easily could, and should, be verified.

That possibility is that tax exempt organizations with the words “tea party” and “patriot” in their names may have a particular history of attempting to flout the law—and may have done so more frequently than other organizations of this kind.  If such a reality, not ideology, was the basis of the  “criteria” the IRS employed, the agency was doing exactly what it is supposed to do—enforce the tax code.

501(c)(4) organizations are required by law to pursue “social welfare,” not politics.  This entitles them to a tax exemption.  It also allows their donors to remain anonymous.  Anonymity is the key point.  When a supposedly “grass roots” organization purporting to advance “social welfare” is, in reality, a sham, bankrolled by wealthy donors with a blatantly political agenda, its behavior is not only embarrassing but illegal.

That such chicanery goes on is not in doubt.  Numerous 501(c)(4) organizations have been exposed as fronts for the funneling of anonymous and tax-exempt money toward explicitly political purposes.  The infamous Koch brothers have been guilty of this dodge more than once.  So has the equally infamous Karl Rove.  There are some on the right (and for all I know, on the left as well) who have even been foolish enough to boast of it.

The question is not whether such chicanery happens, and it certainly isn’t whether this behavior deserves to be scrutinized and stopped.  The question is whether the record of “tea party” organizations is statistically more suspect than others.  If that is not the case, the IRS deserves every bit of the opprobrium that is now coming its way.  If it is the case, however, the agency deserves not only praise but encouragement.

The trouble is that the IRS may be the least-loved department of government, and the mere thought of IRS scrutiny is every American’s worst nightmare.  Nonetheless, that is no reason to let politically convenient assumptions cloud the facts.  Let’s find out what the facts really are before we decide who deserves the blame.  We might be surprised by the result.