Op-Eds and Blogs

Actually, numbers aren’t that hard to understand. But sometimes they’re hard to admit to. The Senate Budget Committee heard from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sylvia Burwell – President Obama’s budget chief. It was Ms. Burwell’s job to defend a bad budget offered in bad faith. I asked Ms. Burwell about whether the administration is offering any reforms to control the soaring costs of entitlements (not really) and whether the administration will be honest with the American people about the value of the Social Security trust fund (no). But you really should see the effort that Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama had to put into finding out whether President Obama’s budget blows away the spending limits the president himself agreed to just 10 weeks ago.

It was 50 years ago, Larry Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic remind us in the Wall Street Journal, that the president signed on of the 20th century’s three great across-the-board tax cuts. That president was Lyndon Johnson. He was seeing through the proposal of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, to cut the income tax rate dramatically. The bottom rate fell from 20% to 14%. The top rate went from 91% to 70%. This was the work of Democrats in the presidency and in Congress, Kudlow and Domitrovic write, reminding us that once Democrats knew tax cuts do wonders for an economy.

More than 140,000 Americans commented on the IRS’ proposed rules that would allow it to go on targeting political groups based on their views. I was one of them. If my comments sound stern, it is because the IRS’ encroachment on the First Amendment is incredibly dangerous. How dangerous? Kimberly Strassel outlined it in the Wall Street Journal. For one thing, the IRS appears to have learned nothing from last spring’s scandalous revelations: “About a month after the IRS inspector general released his bombshell report about IRS targeting of conservative groups last May, Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel unveiled a ‘plan of action’ for correcting the mess. One highlight was that targeted groups would be offered a new optional "expedited" process for getting 501(c)(4) status. “The deal, which received little public attention, boiled down to this: We'll do our job, the IRS said, if you give up your rights. Those taking part in the ‘expedited’ process had to agree to limit to 40% the amount of spending and time (calculated by employee and volunteers hours) they spend on political activity. Current 501(c)(4) rules allow political spending up to 49%, and have no ‘time’ component. The clear point of the ‘deal’ was to use the lure of 501(c)(4) approval to significantly reduce the political activity of targeted conservative groups going forward.”

The IRS, which did not seem to find any lessons in its political targeting scandal last spring, is proposing new regulations to restrict political speech. I submitted comments, as did well over 100,000 other Americans. This is what I told the IRS: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is today the most widely feared federal agency, and rightly so in light of last spring’s revelations about the politically motivated targeting of certain organizations. To all but the most partisan eye, the IRS was turned into a political weapon against the opponents of the current administration. This is simply wrong. It is un-American.