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| President Barack Obama speaks on the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday May 15, 2013. Obama announced the resignation of Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, the top official at the IRS. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Hurrying to check a growing controversy, President Barack Obama
ousted the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service late
Wednesday amid an outcry over revelations that the agency had improperly
targeted tea party groups for scrutiny when they filed for tax-exempt
status.
Obama said Treasury Secretary Jacob
Lew had asked for and accepted Steven T. Miller's resignation.
"Americans
are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," Obama said in
a televised statement from the White House. "I will not tolerate this
kind of behavior in any agency but especially in the IRS, given the
power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives."
Miller's
ouster came five days after an IRS supervisor publicly revealed that
agents had improperly targeted groups with "tea party" or "patriots" in
their applications for tax exempt status. It came a day after an
inspector general's report blamed ineffective management in Washington
for allowing it to happen for more than 18 months.
The
report said tea party groups were asked inappropriate questions about
their donors, their political affiliations and their positions on
political issues, resulting in delays averaging nearing two years for
applications to be processed.
Miller's
departure hardly ends the matter. Three congressional committees are
investigating, and the FBI is
looking into potential civil rights
violations at the IRS, Attorney General Eric Holder said earlier
Wednesday.
Other potential crimes include
making false statements to authorities and violating the Hatch Act,
which prohibits federal employees from engaging in some partisan
political activities, Holder said.
Miller, a
25-year IRS veteran, took over the agency in November when the five-year
term of Commissioner Douglas Shulman ended. Shulman was appointed by
President George W. Bush.
Obama has yet to nominate a permanent successor. A new acting commissioner was not announced Wednesday evening.
In
an email to employees, Miller said, "This has been an incredibly
difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and
there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the
nation's tax agency. I believe the service will benefit from having a
new acting commissioner in place during this challenging period."
In
Lew's letter asking for Miller's resignation, Lew wrote that the
inspector general's report "has created an urgent need to restore public
trust and confidence in the IRS by installing new leadership for the
service."
At the time when tea party groups
were targeted, Miller was a deputy commissioner who oversaw the division
that dealt with tax-exempt organizations.
The
report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration does
not indicate that Miller knew conservative groups were being targeted
until after the practice ended. But documents show that Miller
repeatedly failed to tell Congress that tea party groups were being
targeted, even after he had been briefed on the matter.
The
IRS said Miller was first informed on May, 3, 2012, that applications
for tax-exempt status by tea party groups were inappropriately singled
out for extra, sometimes burdensome scrutiny.
At
least twice after the briefing, Miller wrote letters to members of
Congress to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt
status without revealing that tea party groups had been targeted. On
July 25, 2012, Miller testified before the House Ways and Means
oversight subcommittee but again was not forthcoming on the issue -
despite being asked about it.
In all, members
of Congress sent at least eight letters to the IRS over the past two
years, asking about complaints from conservative groups that they were
being harassed by the IRS. None of the IRS responses acknowledged that
conservative groups were targeted.
Miller was
scheduled to testify Friday at a Ways and Means hearing. A committee
aide said Wednesday evening that Miller was still expected to attend the
hearing.
"More than two years after the
problem began, and a year after the IRS told us there was no problem,
the president is beginning to take action," said Senate Republican
leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "These allegations are serious -
that there was an effort to bring the power of the federal government to
bear on those the administration disagreed with, in the middle of a
heated national election. We are determined to get answers."
The Justice department opened its criminal investigation on Friday, Holder said.
"I
can assure you and the American people that we will take a
dispassionate view of this," Holder told the House Judiciary Committee
at a hearing Wednesday. "This will not be about parties, this will not
be about ideological persuasions. Anybody who has broken the law will be
held accountable."
But, Holder said, it will take time to determine if there was criminal wrongdoing.
Legal
experts, however, said it could be difficult to prove that IRS
officials or employees knowingly violated the civil rights of
conservative groups. If there is a violation, the experts said,
investigators can sometimes prove more easily that officials made false
statements or obstructed justice in some other way.
"I
think it's doubtful that any of these knuckleheads who engaged in the
conduct that gave rise to this controversy knowingly believed that they
were violating the law," said David H. Laufman, a former Justice
Department lawyer. "But that remains to be seen. That's what
investigations are for."
The IRS started
targeting groups with "Tea Party," `'Patriots" or "9/12 Project" in
their applications for tax exempt status in March 2010, the inspector
general's report said. The criteria later evolved to include groups that
promoted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Wednesday's hearing was the first of several in Congress that will focus on the issue.
The
House Oversight Committee announced Wednesday that it would hold a
hearing May 22, featuring Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS division that
oversees tax exempt organizations, and Shulman, the former
commissioner.
The Senate Finance Committee announced a hearing for next Tuesday.
Colleen
M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said
Wednesday that no union employees had been disciplined, as far as she
knew. She noted that the IG's report said agents were not motivated by
political bias.
Kelley told The Associated
Press that low-level workers could not have specifically targeted
conservative groups for long without the approval of supervisors.
However, she noted, there are many levels of supervisors at the IRS.
"No
processes or procedures or anything like that would ever be done just
by front-line employees without any management involvement," Kelley
said. "That's just not how it operates."
