IRS Grants Welfare Tx Exempt to Karl Rove’s Dark Political Machine

                                                                     

In a farcical abuse of common sense and the American taxpayer, the Internal Revenue Service has granted Crossroads GPS, the dark-money machine of Karl Rove, the Republicans’ guru of attack politics, status as a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization. This means it can keep its deep-pocketed campaign donors secret. The ludicrous I.R.S. finding that the group is not primarily what it so obviously is — a strident G.O.P. operation that should be required to name its donors — is essentially a license for it to run amok in the current federal election cycle with anonymous, unlimited donations.

The ruling, quietly made in November and brought to light this week by the Center for Responsive Politics, signals a shameful retreat by the I.R.S. from enforcing regulations intended to prevent abuses of the nonprofit tax law by campaign operatives. The agency had come under attack from Tea Party and other right-wing groups for questioning their claims to be “social welfare” exemptions, and the Rove ruling is the latest result. It can only invite more partisan operatives to pretend to have society’s nonpolitical interests at heart as they fill campaign troughs with money from hidden donors.

Since pioneering this fiction, Mr. Rove has proved to be no Mother Teresa of a social welfare advocate, as he strategizes obsessively for Republican hegemony. His group has spent $330 million on election ads and candidate support since it was created in 2010, after the Supreme Court freed corporations and unions from political spending limits, according to the center’s watchdog blog, Open Secrets. The dodge has become bipartisan, with President Obama’s re-election helped by the Democrats’ Priorities USA Action operation as a “social welfare” organization under section 501©(4) of the tax code. 

When he first ran, Mr. Obama promised to fight for reform of big-money politics, but he failed to follow through. Similar vows are being heard from the candidates for the Democratic nomination this year. Senator Bernie Sanders so far has been riding a wave of small donations, while Hillary Clinton, aided by “super PACs” and small donors, is promising to rein in the special-interest money driving the current campaign. Republican candidates would rather talk about walling off Mexico and ending Obamacare, even as they profit from operations like Mr. Rove’s.

The public’s voice is sorely needed on an issue that is at the very heart of concern over an affluent minority’s growing power in American politics. Trying to portray sheer check-writing power as a “social welfare” benefit insults honest taxpayers. “Operating for the benefit of one particular candidate or party, it’s hard to say that’s not private benefit,” Marcus Owens, the former I.R.S. director of exempt organizations, told ProPublica in reacting to the agency’s misguided blessing of the Rove machine.

New York Times