IRS follies are no laughing matter
“Maliciously self-indulgent” is how Rep. Darrell Issa aptly described the shameless splurging by IRS higher-ups over a three-year period.
An inspector general’s report found that $49 million was spent on 225 purported training conferences from 2010 to 2012. One conference held in Anaheim, Calif., cost a cool $4.1 million peppered with “questionable expenses,” including stupid video productions, $3,500 a night hotel rooms and much, much more.
It is an arrant abuse committed by people who are very clearly disconnected from the taxpayers they extract money from, over a period when those taxpayers have been struggling with an anemic economy. It merely validates mistrust of the IRS, and unfortunately, it’s not shocking.
It was just last year that the General Services Administration was caught up in a similar spending imbroglio in Las Vegas.
But for the IRS, this is just the latest outrage. The feared bureaucracy has been embroiled in scandal over targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status with onerous and intrusive reviews in the two years prior to the 2012 presidential election. That matter continues to make news with ongoing congressional hearings and revelations supporting the contention that the IRS was deployed as a political weapon to suppress conservative activism. And it appears there will be more.
The Treasury Inspector General is conducting an audit, with a report expected in the fall, over a reported $92 million paid out in bonuses to IRS employees over a four-year period.
Among the more handsomely compensated recipients was Sarah Hall Ingram, the former head of the IRS’s Tax-Exempt division, which was responsible for scrutinizing conservative groups. Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, a $34,440 bonus in 2010, a $35,400 bonus in 2011 and a $26,550 bonus in 2012 for a grand total of more than $103,000 in roughly the same period that conservative applications for tax-exempt status were stalled. How, under all these circumstances, would anybody expect the IRS to treat advocates for limited government and fiscal responsibility fairly?
And guess what? Although her exact role in the conservative suppression scandal has not come to light yet, Ingram is now the director of Obamacare’s IRS office.
That’s right. She got promoted. Even though she may have been a player in what may be the most tarnishing scandal ever incurred by the IRS, she will be in charge of imposing Obamacare on Americans.
Fortunately, Rep. Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been grilling some IRS officials. Put on an embarrassing hot seat last week was the middle manager who played Spock in a “Star Trek” parody that was produced for the Anaheim conference with taxpayer money. Congress needs to keep these witnesses coming until these scandals are fully unraveled and sanity is “beamed back aboard.”
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.