Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), a ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has called for a congressional hearing into the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
J. Russell George, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004, conducted an audit of the IRS that concluded the federal agency had used “inappropriate criteria” to target tea party groups.
However, Levin revealed Tuesday that the same “inappropriate criteria” appeared to have been used to target progressive groups — and continued to be used after it had stopped being used for tea party groups.
“Please describe in detail why your report dated May 14, 2013 omitted the fact that ‘Progressives’ was used,” Levin wrote in a letter to George.
“The American public expects competent, impartial, unbiased, and non-political treatment from the IRS,” the Congressman concluded. “The same standard is also applicable to you and your organization. Your audit served as the basis and impetus for a wide range of Congressional investigations and this new information shows that the foundation of those investigations is flawed in a fundamental way.”
The audit stated the IRS was wrong to use “Be On the Look Out” (BOLO) memos to target tea party groups. But at least seven BOLO memos used by IRS agents included the word “progressive,” a fact that was completely omitted from George’s audit.
In addition, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked George during a congressional investigation if the IRS had “a BOLO for MoveOn or progressive?” George responded that he couldn’t provide a “definitive response.”
Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) on Thursday blasted Republicans for failing to act on the transportation funding bill while touting the repeal of the medical device tax as a “jobs bill.”
“This is further evidence of what is really going on here in this establishment,” he said on the House floor. “A deliberate effort, now increasingly undisguised, to close the door on action to engender job creation and economic growth before the election. November 6 is what is driving the Republican Congress. Politics, not people. This is not only cynical; it is indeed pernicious. We owe it to the American people to blow the whistle on this.”
The Senate in March passed legislation reauthorizing transportation funding for two years with bipartisan support. The $109-billion bill is estimated to create 1.8 million jobs, but the Republican-led House has failed to act on the legislation.
“That bill would means jobs, millions of jobs,” Levin said. “No action. The Republican House message is ‘our way or the highway’ and that means no highways. It is June. There is now the likelihood of no action or none before the construction season is over in numerous states.”
“We will hear today Republican efforts to describe the bill before us to repeal the tax on medical devices as a jobs bill,” he added. “What it really is is another Republican effort to repeal health care reform.”
Republicans on Thursday pushed for legislation, H.R. 436, to repeal the medical device tax, which is part of the Democrat’s health care reform bill. The 2.3 percent tax will be implemented on January 1, 2013, and is estimated to raise $29 billion over the next decade.
Republicans claim the tax will hurt the medical device industry and lead to job losses.
“In Ohio alone, this new tax threatens the jobs of more than 35,000 people,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Thursday. “With many medical device manufacturers headquartered in our area, it will surely affect families in our community and our region’s economy.”
But Democrats argue the extra costs for medical device manufacturers will be more than offset by the benefit they receive from the new health care law. The White House claimed Thursday the new health care law would give the industry approximately 30 million new potential customers.
Democrats in both chambers of Congress are scrambling to pass legislation to reauthorize expired unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless before a looming July 4 recess. One such measure failed in a 261-155 House vote on Tuesday.
Bill cosponsor Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said Democrats will return to the measure on Wednesday, when it will face a much lower simple-majority 219-vote threshold. "It will pass," said Levin, who added that he is coordinating with his counterparts in the Senate. (The House bill required a two-thirds majority on Tuesday because it was brought to the floor under a suspension of the rules.)
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has been shuttling back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber in hopes of winning 60 votes for the Senate's own version of a standalone unemployment benefits bill.
"Sen. Reid has had some conversations with Republicans to see what we can do to get UI on the floor and passed," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley. Moderate Republicans have resisted supporting domestic aid bills in recent weeks because of deficit concerns. Only Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) has said she'd be willing to vote for a bill that reauthorizes extended unemployment if doing so adds to the deficit. With Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson demanding that any spending bill be deficit neutral, Reid apparently needs at least three Republicans, and he might be considering funding offsets to win them over.
[UPDATE 8:30 P.M. Reid and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) filed for cloture Tuesday evening on a bill to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits through November and also the first-time home-buyer tax credit until October. A spokesman told HuffPost a vote could happen as soon as Wednesday. The measure is not paid for and would add roughly $33 billion to the deficit.]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told HuffPost on Friday that Democrats have indeed been mulling paying for the benefits. "One of the debates that goes on now -- which I completely resist, but it's one of the debates going on -- is at the end of the day, these people have to have their benefits, and should we begin paying for unemployment benefits?"
The measures under consideration would preserve through November the extended benefits originally put in place by President Obama's stimulus bill at the beginning of 2009, which in some states provided checks for up to 99 weeks -- an unprecedented amount of help for the unemployed. Historically, Congress has always designated extended benefits "emergency spending" during times of high unemployment, and has never allowed extended benefits to lapse when the national unemployment rate stands above 7.2 percent.
Levin said Republicans' resistance to helping the unemployed made them look "callous," and he lamented the fact that the media doesn't put much of a face on the current congressional jobs jam -- despite the more than 1.2 million people out of work for longer than six months who since June 1 have missed checks because of congressional dithering, a number that will reach nearly 1.7 million this Friday.
Levin called complaints about adding to the deficit to pay for benefits "lame."
"The problem that exists -- 20 years ago I took a USA Today reporter out to an employment office and he interviewed the people in line waiting for their checks and it was a wide diversity of people, and it was a front-page story," Levin said. "The problem I have and you have is there's no place you can go to talk to the unemployment. They get their checks through the Internet -- the money's sent to them. So it's hard to put a human face on this, but there are 1.7 million human faces, plus their families, so we're determined to find a way to humanize this."
Republicans and even some Democrats have suggested that the extended benefits aren't worth keeping because they're making people lazy. "The message from a lot of our Republican colleagues is that there are a lot of people who aren't looking for work," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). "That's just not true. In order to qualify for unemployment, you have to demonstrate that you're making a determined effort to look for work."
