Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care

FREEDOMWORKS.COM

Rough week for the White House, huh? Trying to keep up with all these scandals is like drinking from a firehose and every day the water rushes out faster. And how did Obama respond to the right, left and center calling out his seemingly lawless behavior? With arrogance, of course.

As a Twitter hashtag game asked users to describe Obamacare in three words, the official White House account stumbled in. “It’s. The. Law.” they sneered, attaching a photo of the President’s signature on his train wreck legislation.

One would hope the events of the past week would chasten this administration, but the response has been nothing but petulance. Expecting this tone-deaf response, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted Thursday for a full repeal of Obamacare.

This has been tried three times before, but this is the first repeal vote in the 113th Congress. While none have eliminated the horribly misnamed Affordable Care Act, each vote has highlighted the deep problems with Obama’s effort to remake health care in his image.

Those on the left and in the media (but I repeat myself) are already calling a repeal a waste of time, but the evidence doesn’t lie. Eliminating at least parts of the law have broad-based, bipartisan support.

The medical device tax, which is one of Obamacare’s principal funding sources, has already been repealed by the House and the Democrat-controlled Senate. In fact, the Senate repeal passed with a vote of 79 to 20. President Obama himself has signed into law seven different bills that repeal significant parts of the ACA.

The shocking revelations about the IRS will make Obamacare an even tougher sell, seeing how that runaway agency is slated to enforce the intrusive new law. To prevent that from happening, Georgia congressman Tom Price just introduced the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act.

Less than a week ago the American people learned what many had already suspected that the IRS had inappropriately abused its authority to target and intimidate certain individuals and organizations trying to practice their right to free speech,” said Rep. Price. “This comes at the same time that the Obama Administration is rolling out the implementation of its health care law which invests enormous powers in the IRS. The same agency that just committed an appalling violation of the American people’s trust is going to be at the forefront of enforcing the health care law, including the individual mandate which will require every citizen to prove to this agency that they’ve purchased government-dictated health care coverage.

Not convinced yet? Let me introduce you to Sarah Hall Ingram:

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

Obamacare is unpopular enough. Add in the loathed IRS and their unprecedented bullying, and the left’s dream of health care “reform” is in a perfect storm of trouble. Legislators of both parties should seize this opportunity to stop the train wreck before it hurts anyone else.