Historians are likely to highlight two federal-government trends that occurred during the Obama years:
- The number of federal agencies that utterly failed to effectively accomplish their jobs, undermining what little faith the public still had in government, and
- The number that engaged in prohibited activities, undermining the rule of law and threatening our constitutional liberties.
The Internal Revenue Service will likely be at the top of both lists. Besides the agency’s resistance to approving numerous right-leaning groups’ applications for nonprofit status, it illegally and unconstitutionally targeted and harassed many of those groups.
Now we learn that the IRS has been expanding a dubious practice known as “civil forfeiture, ” which allows the government to seize the assets of a suspect. Originally intended for criminals, such as drug traffickers and money launderers, the IRS has taken the process much further. As the New York Times notes, “[T]he government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent.”
How pervasive has this practice become? The Institute for Justice has just released a study claiming that in 2005 the IRS engaged in 114 civil forfeiture seizures, by 2012 it was 639.
Remember, the IRS gets to keep the money and property it seizes, if a judge doesn’t make it give it back, so the IRS has a financial interest.
The Times says that in response to questions from the paper, Richard Weber, chief of Criminal Investigations for the IRS, released a statement claiming that the IRS would walk back its civil forfeiture actions. The statement reads, in part, “… I.R.S.-C.I. will no longer pursue the seizure and forfeiture of funds associated solely with ‘legal source’ structuring cases unless there are exceptional circumstances justifying the seizure and forfeiture and the case has been approved at the director of field operations (D.F.O.) level.”
Feel better? You shouldn’t. Under a normal presidential administration, one might excuse this as the unfortunate actions of a rogue department within a federal agency. But this is no normal presidential administration.
President Obama’s faith in all things government, and his willingness to ignore the law himself and encourage federal agencies to do the same, has established a pattern of lawlessness—from the very agencies that are supposed to protect us from lawbreakers.
Congress should immediately call hearings and get to the bottom of this unconstitutional theft. And it should consider whether it’s time to reform the IRS, or replace it with a more-limited agency.
Ultimately, as voters we may have to protect ourselves by voting out politicians who refuse to abide by the law.