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A Scandalous Ideology

With so many big government scandals now implicating the Obama administration, there is a great effort to tie them personally to President Obama, to discover exactly what he knew about the IRS targeting conservatives, the AP’s phone records, or Benghazi security.

Kimberly Strassel’s column in the Wall Street Journal today details how the 2008 Obama campaign pioneered some of the very tactics the President now claims to be outraged by, asking for Justice Department investigations of conservative groups and their donors. If it does turn out that the President knew about some of the corruption or incompetence under his watch, he will bear clear responsibility. He already does as the Chief Executive of the executive branch.

But Republicans should be clear: big government scandals are not about Obama. They are about big government -- big government that is absolutely out of control whether under Obama or any other president.

They’re big government scandals because they all arise from the enormous bureaucratic structures which give unelected people tremendous power with little accountability. Corruption is completely predictable. As George Will said on ABC’s This Week recently, “The best construction on the IRS scandal is big government is impossible to monitor...Any government has to be trusted. But the bigger the government gets, the bigger the distrust ought to be and will be.”

What better example is there of big government than the IRS?

This is an agency to which every single person, business, and charity must send intimate financial details every single year.

It employs close to 100,000 bureaucrats.

These bureaucrats administer a tax code that is so big and so complex that it is far beyond anyone’s ability to understand. They are empowered to audit any person or group of people they choose, checking for compliance with these often indecipherable rules, at great expense to the subjects.

It is impossible to ensure all these bureaucrats use their power properly, and if the public ever does discover impropriety it is virtually impossible to fire them because they are heavily unionized against the taxpayers whose taxes they collect.

Is it any surprise that such an institution would be susceptible to corruption? That it would persecute groups it did not like? That it would seek to protect itself, its bosses, and its workers from accountability?

That’s how you end up with IRS agents investigating the Tea Party breakfasts hosted by an 83-year-old grandmother who was held in an internment camp during World War II. That’s how you end up with IRS agents demanding to know from another organization “the content of the members’...prayers.”

When corruption occurs in such an institution it is not right to say it was done by “rogue” employees. It’s the inevitable outcome of creating an agency with vast powers and little oversight. But agencies with vast powers and little oversight are what big government is all about.

Columnist John Kass put it best in the Chicago Tribune last week recalling how he learned the “Chicago way” growing up in the city as the son of small business owners.

“The city code books aren't thick because politicians like to write new laws and regulations,” he wrote. “The codes are thick because when government swings them at a citizen, they hurt.”

James Bovard writing in the Wall Street Journal last week recalled alarming evidence of a culture of corruption that has infested the IRS for some time: "A 1991 survey of 800 IRS executives and managers by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed that three out of four respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie when testifying before a congressional committee."

The study is old, but has IRS culture changed? Recent reports clearly suggest it has not

The administration’s handling of the Benghazi scandal shows a similar willingness to deceive the American people.

Through twelve drafts of talking points for Congress and other public officials, representatives of the White House and various federal departments whittled down intelligence presented by the CIA into something unrecognizable and untruthful.

They seemed less concerned about presenting accurate information than about hiding information that might have made them look bad. The dishonesty continued for months -- is still continuing -- as Congress is forced to confront officials who want to mislead them every bit as much as the IRS has.

It certainly matters whether President Obama knew about these big government scandals or not. But even more important than his prior knowledge is his certain knowledge today that he presides over a government that is ungovernable at its current size with its current bureaucratic structures and work rules, out of anyone’s control including his own, a government whose very condition is a scandal. He knows abuses of power are common at every level. He knows this government is the product of his own political ideology. And instead of taking decisive action to reform these bureaucratic structures, his entire agenda is to expand their reach.

This is a larger, more important fight for America than just a Congressional skirmish with Obama. These scandals are laying bare what big government is: structures so vast they are uncontrollable. Conservatives want things to be governed. They want simple rules to be fairly enforced. The oppressive and unaccountable bureaucracies we have today are not a way of doing that. They’re just the opposite.

Your Friend,
Newt




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