we had somebody on yesterday told me they were it was somebody on the right yesterday was here. and she was pointing out that they were held to a standard. they could not get involved in elections. they couldn t put the name of candidates on their ballot, on materials they send out. there is some disciplining going on among these groups. you and i know it s a vague difference between saying you re a policy organization and you hate obama care, but they were told they couldn t say the word obama care as they get closer to the election. so somebody s at least policing this correctly. if you were holding a hearing right now on the next commissioner of the irs, what standard would you set? what actions would you demand of that person, man or woman, who s about to get the permanent job now, because it s open? well, i would look at, first of all, i d look at what senator whitehouse shared with a group of us today. senator whitehouse from rhode island. what these forms say that you fill
groups. post reports additional irs employees in washington, d.c., and out in california also looked at the tea party groups to determine their eligibility for tax exemption. the irs says steven miller who s been serving as acting commissioner since last fall was told this has been happening, well, was happening back in may of 2012, about a year after lois lerner who oversees that division was informed herself. miller wrote in usa today in an op-ed piece in part, quote, we should have done a better job of handling the influx of applications by advocacy groups. mistakes were made but in no way due to political or partisan motivation. he also said there was a shortcut taken in our processes to determine which groups needed atigsal review. the mistakes we made were due to absence of sufficient process for working the increase in cases and a lack of sensitivity to the implications of some of the decisions that were made. senator sherrod brown is a democrat from ohio and member of the b
association, et cetera. the 501 c-4 is a specific nonprofit known as social welfare groups think civic leagues and local volunteer fire departments which according to the irs function merely for the purpose of betterment and social improvements. unlike their cousins, however, c-4s may engage some some political activities, this is according to the irs, so long as that is not their primary activity. it s a marquee definition that s given c-4s a whole lot of wiggle room to play politicses. c-4s are attractive because they re tax exempt and mostly because they allow donors to remain anonymous. they ve become the vehicle of choice for dark money flowing into influence elections allowing liberals to carl rhodes cross roads gps to shield their donors and get a little tax
reaction, if you heard dick cheney, when he was still calling the shots with george w. bush, and you found out that they were investigating for irs purposes any group with the name progressive in the organization? of course, i d feel an anger about that. and a moral outrage about that. i think this is the same thing. i do say it s bigger than just what the irs has done that s being reported now. the bigger issue is the irs allowing groups that are engaging in political activity in a big way, tens of millions of dollars, to pass themselves off as charitable contributions. that s breaking the law as the irs apparently has done here by singling out groups. so this needs to be an aggressive enforcement regardless of your political stance, political position. whether you re liberal, conservative, progressive or far right. the irs needs to look at the tax exempt status of these groups that are masquerading as charitable organizations. okay.
way to screen these groups. then it brings up your question. what gave you the idea these criteria that you applied were appropriate. i don t see this going through this report i haven t seen any justification for why they chose those criteria. they said statistically that ended up meaning one-third of all the groups they screened had the words tea party or patriots in the name. which is a lot. but i d like to see why they didn t choose groups with progressive in the title. or any other delineation that would have made it more balanced. here s some good news for the white house. even in our first edition tonight we were talking about the possibility, purely the possibility that there might be some white house involvement or campaign involvement where somebody in the obama administration might have said, you know, we ought to look at these tea party people. they re raising a ton of money. maybe they re doing it illegally and getting involved in campaigning. according to this ig repo