what some people are saying is that the irs was used at a local level in cincinnati, maybe other places absolutely wrong. how do you know that? we don t know what happened there. we do that s not what happened. folks again have had multiple hearings on this. these kinds of things keep on surfacing in part because you and your tv station will promote them. but aren t there unanswered questions? bill, when you look at the stuff, there s been multiple hearings on it. you have a 501 c4 law people think is confusing that folks did not know how to implement. poor bill o reilly. could not understand a word of what president obama was saying and like everyone else at fox news and most people in the political news media, bill
mistakenly allow the word primarily to define how much social welfare activity a 501-c4 would have to engage in. but the regulation would go on to try to define the kinds of political activity that would prevent an organization from getting 501-c4 status. and to define what kinds of political activity a 501-c4, exactly how much of it they could engage in. republicans fear any change in the regulation, since the regulation has allowed republicans and other political operators to wildly abuse 501-c4 law. and so in the house ways and means committee, the republican chairman introduced a bill today that would, quote, prohibit the internal revenue service from modifying the standard for determining whether that whether an organization that has operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare for purposes of section 501-c4 of the internal revenue code. the funny thing about this republican bill is that it does
primarily operated for the promotion of social welfare, not exclusively. just primarily. the obama administration may have learned of this change for the first time from this program on may 13 of last year. because as of that time, no one in the white house or the irs or congress had noticed or mentioned the words of the law and how the words of the 1913 law conflict with the words of the 1959 irs guideline. the law is, of course, the law. written by congress and signed by the president. and the guideline, the regulation, is just a guideline. the obama administration now recognized the huge conflict between the law and the regulation and so they have suggested changes to make the regulation more understandable. under the obama version of the guideline, they would still
not want 501-c4s to be operated according to the law. and that word exclusively. the republican bill is an attempt to preserve the scandalous change in the regulation that occurred in 1959, which was made in the political dark of night when no one knew about it. today, the chairman of the ways and means committee said this the rationale of the irs and treasury is that the rules that have been in place for more than 50 years created confusion. notice that the chairman doesn t say that the refers only to the rule that s been in place for 50 years. the rule. the guideline. he didn t say law. the law has been in place for 100 years. why don t we just enforce the law word for word? there is not one republican on waits and means committee who wants to enforce the law word for word. what their bill does is simply prevent the obama administration
something you wouldn t think you would have to tell them the government to do. enforce the law as written. words have meaning, exclusively does not mean primarily. exclusively is what the law passed by the congress and signed by president wood rrow wilson says. everyone who voted on that law and president wilson understood what the word exclusively means. the law they passed was a good law. a clear law. not even slightly confusing. and it was supremely easy to enforce for 50 years until an unelected bureaucrat changed it without legal authority. it is time to simply enforce the law. ameriprise asked people a simple question: in retirement, will you outlive your money?