Not that this prevented them from having a go at Miller, who might as well have been made to testify from a set of medieval stocks. That way, the congressmen and the Tea Party supporters in the public benches could have lobbed rotten apples and tomatoes at him. Instead, Miller got to sit at the witness table, rustle his papers, and twiddle his thumbs. A shaggy-haired man with thick glasses, he looked a bit tired, which was understandable.
Shortly after nine, Dave Camp, the Michigan Republican who heads the committee, set the tone for the morning. In an opening statement, he described the recent discovery that the I.R.S.’s Cincinnati office allegedly targeted conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status for special review, and claimed that this as “just the tip of the iceberg.” Camp didn’t fully specify what other horrors were submerged below the surface, but he suggested that they included the I.R.S. threatening donors to right-leaning groups and leaking information to ProPublica and the Huffington Post, and the Obama Administration covering up the agency’s misbehavior. “It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election,” Camp averred.
Then, just in case Miller was suffering under the misapprehension that the Democrats on the committee would give him a warmer welcome, Sander Levin, the ranking minority member, who is also from Michigan, said, “All of us are angry at this on behalf of the nation.” In truth, Levin, a genial old fellow with white hair who resembles Father Christmas, didn’t look like he was furious. But he tried his best. Since the President had beaten him to demanding Miller’s head, he called for the firing of another top I.R.S. official, Lois Lerner, who heads up the division that deals with tax-exempt organizations.
The first witness to speak was J. Russell George, the Inspector General for Tax Administration, who highlighted some of the conclusions of the report that cost Miller his job and said that, in using terms like “Tea Party” and “patriots” as criteria for selecting applications for further review, the agency had “brought into question whether the I.R.S. has treated all taxpayers fairly, which is an essential part of its mission statement.” There’s no doubt about that, but it didn’t answer the question of whether I.R.S. agents deliberately targeted conservative groups for political reasons, which is the allegation that underpins the entire scandal.
Miller said bluntly that they didn’t: “I do not believe partisanship motivated the actions”—of the officials in the Cincinnati office. What actually happened, he went on, was “foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.” Deluged with applications for tax-exempt status, many of which came from conservative groups with ties to politics, the officials took the “short cut” of looking for words like “Tea Party” and “patriots” in the names of groups that submitted applications. But nobody specifically “targeted” conservative groups. “There was no targeting because there was no intent,” Miller said. The applications that the agent put into a queue for further review came from groups from across the political spectrum, he reminded his inquisitors. Only seventy out of about three hundred had “Tea Party” or similar words in their names.
If you saw my previous post, you’ll already be familiar with this version of what happened. It’s what the I.R.S. officials concerned told the staff of the Inspector General of Taxes, and it’s reflected in the body of his report, although not in its conclusions. In fact, few people other than Miller and me seem to be taking it very seriously. As Miller was insisting that there wasn’t any political motivation to the I.R.S.’s actions, there were laughs and snickers around the hearing room.
The fact remains that, thus far, nobody has come up with one iota of evidence to contradict Miller’s story. One of the congressmen asked George, the Inspector General of Taxes, if his staff had found any suggestion of political motivations on the part of the I.R.S. employees. “We did not,” George replied. None of the Republicans on the committee presented any evidence to contradict this. Rather than focussing on the details of how the I.R.S. investigators dealt with applications for tax-exempt status, many of them criticized Miller for allegedly keeping them in the dark. “[W]e were repeatedly told no such targeting was happening. That isn’t being misled, that’s lying,” Camp said. Paul Ryan, his face dark with anger, suggested Miller may have even broke the law by failing to inform the committee about a briefing he received in May, 2011, which updated him on what had been going on.
On this front, Miller did seem a bit vulnerable. But he kept his cool, repeatedly saying that he had answered all the committee’s questions truthfully during previous hearings. At one point, I thought he might mimic Sir Robin Butler, a former head of the British civil service, who, during a public inquiry into events during the Falklands War, famously conceded that he had been “economical with the truth.” But he didn’t even go that far. The I.R.S. had “provided horrible service” to its customers, he conceded, but there had not been any political targeting, nobody at the agency had broken any laws, and he hadn’t misled the committee.
And so it went on. All heat and no light. Representative Kevin Brady, a bullet-headed Republican from Texas, asked Miller: “Is this still America?” His colleague Dave Reichert, from Washington, informed the witness that he’d been a cop for thirty-three years and knew wrongdoing when he saw it. Mike Kelly, a G.O.P.-er from Pennsylvania, went into a lengthy rant about how terrifying the I.R.S. was, comparing it to the make-believe monsters that caused his grandson to jump out of bed on a night. Finally, just before one o’clock, Chairman Camp adjourned the hearing, saying the investigation had just begun.
If there are any conservatively minded Inspector Clouseaus out there who would like to take the probe further, I suggest you get in touch with Camp’s office, or with Ryan’s. They need your help.
Original Article
Source: newyorker.com
Author: John Cassidy
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