Kimberly Strassel at The Wall Street Journal brings us another informative article on the Obama administration’s jack booted strategy to silence Tea Party groups for the upcoming mid-term elections of 2014. In our last installment we learned that the administration was changing IRS rules in order to silence Tea Party groups by re-classifying activities that they typically engage in so that they are now considered “political.”
In this article we learn just how determined the administration is to keep these new rules in place; so much so that they are unwilling to make them part of any negotiations that take place with Republicans on any other legislation that is passed by congress.
That’s the big, dirty secret of the omnibus negotiations. As one of the only bills destined to pass this year, the omnibus was—behind the scenes—a flurry of horse trading. One of the biggest fights was over GOP efforts to include language to stop the IRS from instituting a new round of 501(c)(4) targeting. The White House is so counting on the tax agency to muzzle its political opponents that it willingly sacrificed any manner of its own priorities to keep the muzzle in place.
And now back to our previously scheduled outrage over the Chris Christie administration’s abuse of traffic cones on the George Washington Bridge.
The fight was sparked by a new rule that the Treasury Department and the IRS introduced during the hush of Thanksgiving recess, ostensibly to “improve” the law governing nonprofits. What the rule in fact does is recategorize as “political” all manner of educational activities that 501(c)(4) social-welfare organizations currently engage in.
It’s IRS targeting all over again, only this time by administration design and with the raw political goal—as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.) notes—of putting “tea party groups out of business.”
Congressional sources tell me that House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) had two priorities in the omnibus negotiations. One was getting in protection for groups that morally oppose ObamaCare’s contraception-coverage requirement. The other was language that would put a hold on the IRS rule.
The White House and Senate Democrats had their own wish list, including an increase in funding for the International Monetary Fund, the president’s prekindergarten program and more ObamaCare dollars.
