5 Takeaways From the Ways and Means IRS Hearing

George, left, and Miller are sworn in before testifying at the Ways and Means Committee hearing. (Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call)

On a rare Friday of congressional action, the first hearing was held to examine the IRS scandal involving the extra, and in some cases unprecedented, scrutiny given to conservative organizations that applied for tax-exempt status over a two-year period covering 2010 to 2012.

Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller was in the hot seat for nearly four hours, as the House Ways and Means Committee grilled him on how and why the federal tax-collecting agency appeared to inject politics into what is supposed to be an independent process. Miller, who will leave his job next month, was joined by Treasury Department Inspector General J. Russell George — he received a considerably more friendly reception.

As the hearing progressed, Ways and Means members slowly but surely veered into typical partisan camps. Republicans insisted that a political conspiracy was behind the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups. Democrats tried to walk a line between disapproval of the IRS’ actions, while defending the credibility of the IRS and accusing the GOP of using the scandal to undermine Obamacare, which requires the agency to hire thousands of new agents to police the new law.

Here are the top five takeaways from Friday’s hearing:

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Democrats Try to Punch Back at House GOP

It was a long week on Capitol Hill for House Democrats, as the chamber’s Republicans hammered President Barack Obama for agency misconduct under his watch, then topped things off with a House vote to repeal his 2010 health care law.

Democrats, however, tried to fight back on Thursday afternoon, looking to beat their GOP counterparts at their own game.

House Republicans scheduled the up-or-down vote to dismantle Obamacare, they said, in part to give the GOP freshman class a chance to go on the record against it.

In that vein, 45 freshmen Democrats argued Thursday, they should be able to have a chance to vote up-or-down on legislation to replace the sequestration with a “balanced solution.”

“This week, the House will vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which it has already done thirty-six times,” they wrote in a May 16 letter to Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “Your justification for another unnecessary repeal vote has been that it allows freshmen members their first formal opportunity to let their constituents know where they stand on repeal. However, you have not allowed freshmen the same opportunity to vote on a balanced alternative to replace sequestration.”

Meanwhile, House Administration Committee member Gregg Harper, R-Miss., continued his crusade this week to pass legislation that would terminate the Election Assistance Commission.

Created when Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, the EAC was given more than $3 billion to dole out to states for improved election administration and is intended to be a clearinghouse of sorts to help facilitate the electoral process.

Harper, however, along with fellow House Administration Committee Republicans, contends that the EAC has outlived its usefulness and has not had any meaningful impact for a long time. Though the House passed his bill in the 112th Congress, it went on to die in the Senate.

On Thursday, panel Democrats introduced legislation that would do the opposite of Harper’s bill: it would reauthorize the EAC and make “substantive improvements” to reinvigorate the commission.

Of course, both Democratic efforts are symbolic ones. In a Republican-controlled House, they are all but dead on arrival – or, dead on press release.

Q&A With Gov. Brian Sandoval (Part II)

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Gov. Brian Sandoval has cut a lower, less-partisan profile than many Republican chiefs executive.

But as a Hispanic Republican and the relatively popular leader of a Western swing state that sided with President Barack Obama last November, Sandoval might be uniquely qualified to offer his party political advice as it seeks to recover in the wake of the disappointing 2012 elections.

In part two of our discussion pulled from my wide-ranging interview conducted earlier this week in the governor’s private office in Nevada’s historic Capitol, Sandoval sounded off on how efforts to change U.S. immigration law might affect the GOP nationally, and what he really thought when 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney talked about “self deportation” as an immigration policy.

The governor revealed some of his thinking about the political landscape at home ahead of the 2014 and 2016 elections and discussed how the actions of the Congress and the White House, or lack thereof, have affected his ability to help Nevada recover from an economic downturn that was felt more acutely in the Silver State than perhaps any other state in the nation.

And we closed the interview with a short segment on Sandoval’s choice of footwear — and discovered a Capitol Hill connection.

Q. Over time, will the Senate immigration reform proposal help the image of the GOP with different ethnic demographics?

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Boehner Wants Debt Limit Talks With Obama

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday that the White House should be prepared to negotiate with House Republicans on the debt limit – despite President Barack Obama’s insistence that he wants to extend it later this summer without strings attached.

“It’s easy to make a statement to that effect,” Boehner said of Obama at his Thursday morning news conference ,”but it’s just not reality.”

Of course, Boehner himself does not appear to have settled on exactly what he would be negotiating for, considering House GOP members emerged from Wednesday’s debt limit brainstorming session without a consensus on what to fight for.

Still, Boehner indicated that House Republicans would likely be seeking deeper spending cuts. “The fact is, that if the Treasury Department needs to pay the bills, the debt limit has to be dealt with, and should be dealt with in a responsible way,” he said. “[Obama] can’t continue to increase the debt limit without doing something about what’s driving the increase in the debt limit, and that is out of control spending.”

Boehner also took the opportunity to tout the House’s vote, set for later in the day, on a bill that would fully repeal Obamacare, the third of its kind since the GOP gained control of the chamber in 2011.

Standing beside the now-infamous, seven-foot “Red Tape Tower,” he gestured to the thousands of pages stacked on top of the other, tied with a red ribbon and balanced on a red hand-cart.

“These are the thousands and thousands of health care regulations,” Boehner explained. “And if we want jobs, we need to get rid of this, because this is getting in the way of employers hiring workers around the country.”

Boehner’s news conference also included mention of the two major scandals that have wreaked havoc on the Obama administration this week, namely revelations that the IRS inappropriately targeted conservative nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status and that the Justice Department seized records from Associated Press phone lines.

“Nothing dissolves the bonds between people and their government like the arrogance of power here in Washington,” Boehner said. “And that’s what the American people are seeing today from the Obama administration: remarkable arrogance.

“This house will stop at nothing to get to the American people the answers that they expect,” he continued. “But the best way to repair this damage is for the Obama administration to come forward with the truth — the whole truth — so that the American people will have all the facts.”

Did Justice Monitor Congress’ Phone Calls With AP?

Nunes said he believes the Obama administration seized AP phone records to track GOP House members. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

Some Republicans are concerned that the Justice Department was essentially able to spy on Congress through its seizure of Associated Press phone records.

Expanding on a Wednesday interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Rep. Devin Nunes told me Thursday morning that there is no other explanation in light of the DOJ’s acknowledgment that, as part of its inquiry into national security leaks, it subpoenaed AP phone records from the House press gallery. That’s a prime spot from which reporters frequently initiate and receive telephone calls from members of Congress and their staff.

The California Republican said that the AP phone records scandal that has focused on First Amendment infringement actually runs deeper, and should examine what he is convinced includes an illegal violation of the separation of powers by President Barack Obama’s administration.

“As I pointed out to Hugh Hewitt, there’s no question that Justice knows what members of Congress the AP was talking to during the two-month time period,” Nunes told CQ Roll Call.

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WH Email Dump Proves GOP Case on Benghazi, Boehner’s Office Says

A spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner said late Wednesday that White House emails just released by the Obama administration bolster the findings of a House Republican investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The White House released 100 pages of emails in a beefed up effort to prove false the GOP charges that the administration attempted to cover up the true nature of the Benghazi attack, which resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three others. Here is the full statement from Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck:

“The House interim report found that ‘senior State Department officials requested the talking points be changed to avoid criticism for ignoring the threat environment in Benghazi’ and that those changes were ultimately made. Those findings are confirmed by the emails released today, and they contradict statements made by the White House that it and the State Department only changed one word in the talking points. The seemingly political nature of the State Department’s concerns raises questions about the motivations behind these changes and who at the State Department was seeking them. This release is long overdue and there are relevant documents the Administration has still refused to produce. We hope, however, that this limited release of documents is a sign of more cooperation to come.”

Q&A: Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval

CARSON CITY, Nev. — From his spacious office in the Silver State’s historic Capitol, Gov. Brian Sandoval keeps one eye focused on Washington, D.C., as he attempts to mitigate the political and economic minefield that has become the implementation of Obamacare.

The first-term Republican governor opposed the Affordable Care Act and joined the lawsuit challenging the legality of President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law. But after the Supreme Court upheld the statute, he moved ahead with the creation of a state health insurance exchange, deciding he would rather have Nevada shape its citizens’ access to care under the law rather than have federal bureaucrats do it 3,000 miles away.

But that doesn’t mean Sandoval, who is up for re-election in 2014 and has been mentioned as a GOP vice-presidential candidate, is happy with the law’s implications for Nevada’s arduous recovery from what was arguably an economic depression brought on by the 2008 real estate collapse. Nor is the governor pleased with the Obama administration’s slow and uncertain pace for writing the regulations that will dictate how states are supposed to operate under the new health care regime.

In part one of my broad interview with Sandoval: our discussion about Obamacare and his thoughts on an immigration overhaul. As a Hispanic Republican and a former federal judge who both presided over citizenship ceremonies and prosecuted undocumented immigrants for breaking immigration laws, Sandoval shared his unique perspectives on the matter and the bill that is currently winding its way through the Senate.

Q. Let’s talk about the Affordable Care Act. We know about the old debate, but now there’s the new debate about implementation. Is the implementation process making it harder for Nevada businesses to expand, or for other businesses that want to expand into Nevada, is the uncertainty around the Affordable Care Act making things difficult?

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GOP Leaders Refuse to Name Obamacare Board Members

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., notified the president today that they will not participate in one of the more controversial parts of the health care law, known as Obamacare.

In a letter, the two GOP leaders said they would not submit Republican appointees to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which was created to try to rein in the costs of Medicare. Critics worry the board has too much power to possibly cut payments to doctors or limit the types of care seniors can get.

Full letter after the jump:

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5 Top Moments of the Benghazi Hearing

House Republicans on Wednesday attempted to dig deeper into the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others dead, during a nearly day-long Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.

The political implications of the testimony of three State Department whistle-blowers remain unclear. But the hearing did have some riveting moments and interesting subplots.

Chairman Darrell Issa of California, joined by his fellow Republicans, asked pointed questions intent on laying responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Barack Obama. Democrats led by ranking member Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, meanwhile, moved to undercut the whistle-blowers and shield Clinton and Obama from blame.

Here are the top five moments from Wednesday’s hearing, which is almost assuredly not the last of its kind on this matter:

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GOP’s Back-Bench Benghazi Critics Step Up Calls for Special Panel

Wolf is pushing to create a bipartisan special committee to investigate last year’s attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

Pressure is mounting on House Republican leaders to form a special committee to investigate the September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Proponents of a special panel maintain that the five committee chairmen currently leading the House GOP’s ongoing Benghazi investigation are too concerned with protecting their turf.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., has been calling for the House to create a bipartisan special committee to investigate the Benghazi  attack since November. Wolf introduced a resolution earlier this year which has attracted 134 GOP co-sponsors, including 14 who signed on last month immediately after the release of a progress report on the current investigation. Five more co-sponsors signed on this week. No Democrats support the bill.

Even so, it doesn’t appear that Speaker John A. Boehner or the committee chairmen feel enough heat to abandon their opposition to a special panel. “The speaker has confidence in the chairmen, members and staff at the committees of jurisdiction,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Thursday.

Supporters of the existing investigatory framework argue privately that a special committee would have to start from scratch, impeding the goal of getting to the bottom of what happened.

The current Republican-led investigation, launched shortly after the incident on Sept. 11, is a joint effort of the Armed Services, Judiciary, Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Government Reform committees. Their initial disclosure directly implicates former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as culpable in the terrorist attack. Democrats have accused Republicans of playing politics.

Supporters of creating a special committee still weren’t satisfied. Their calls for such a body have increased since Fox News reported this week that President Barack Obama’s administration has blocked government officials who want to testify about Benghazi from using whistle-blower protections. The Fox News report also said that military help might have been available to respond to the Benghazi attack, had the administration ordered it.

The incident occurred at the height of the 2012 presidential campaign, and Republicans have suggested that the administration wanted to downplay the event for political purposes.

Wolf continues to field calls from relatives of those killed in Benghazi, according to his spokeswoman, Jill Shatzen, reinforcing his determination to continue pushing for the creation of a special committee. Wolf’s office contends that formation of a special panel does not require House adoption of Wolf’s resolution, just a decision by Boehner. But aides familiar with House rules told CQ Roll Call that the chamber would have to vote to create a special committee, at least one that had a dedicated staff and subpoena power.

Wolf maintains that a special committee would not have to start from scratch, but could use information uncovered by the current joint-committee investigation. He says creating the elevated panel is the only way to shine a light on what happened in Benghazi.

Former Rep. Allen B. West, R-Fla., who retains some influence inside the conservative grass roots, announced Thursday that he also supports creating a special committee.

“What the five committees are doing is not sufficient,” Shatzen said. The House chairmen in question include Armed Services’  Howard “Buck” McKeon and Foreign Affairs’ Ed Royce, both of California; Intelligence’s Mike Rogers of Michigan; Judiciary’s Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia and Oversight and Government Reform’s Darrell Issa of California.

Also dissatisfied is Senate Armed Services ranking member, John McCain of Arizona.

McCain said he would prefer that Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., form a bipartisan, bicameral special committee to investigate what happened in Benghazi. But conceding that Reid is  unlikely to join such an effort, McCain is urging Boehner to launch a special committee in the House, and is blaming the five committee chairmen for being instrumental in blocking such a move.

“Harry Reid will not agree to it. If it has to be the House of Representatives, God speed,” McCain told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. “I would like to see the pressure, pressure on Harry Reid to make it a real joint committee, because I think some of us have to, have things to contribute. But if it has to be in the House, fine with me, but let’s get going,”  

“We’ve got to have a little straight talk here,” McCain added. “Some of the people that are resisting it are the committee chairmen who see that they would be losing some of their areas of responsibility.”

Exclusive: GOP Launches iPhone-Like, High-Tech Data Operation

Priebus is seeking to retool how the party collects and shares data. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

National Republicans are building a new data-sharing platform as the party moves to close a digital divide with Democrats that became glaringly apparent in the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election.

Per a sneak peek provided to CQ Roll Call, the Republican National Committee is set to announce a partnership with two third-party entities designed to facilitate unprecedented data generation and sharing across all GOP party committees, consultants, vendors and the conservative outside groups that have become increasingly active in political campaigns. The effort, which could cost up to $20 million, stems from recommendations made by the Growth and Opportunity Project, the RNC’s internal autopsy of what went wrong last year commissioned by Chairman Reince Priebus.

“One of the biggest priorities identified by the Growth and Opportunity Project was the need to improve our data as a party, but also to increase access to data,” RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said.

Last cycle, the RNC engaged in voter-file list exchanges with other party committees, including the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. To guard against the potential for illegal coordination with these committees, Data Trust, a separate entity whose chairman of the board is former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, facilitated this list sharing. Full story

Romney’s ‘Self-Deport’ Option Could Be Part of House Immigration Plan

The House immigration working group is mulling a proposal that involves “self-deportation” as part of a strategy to make a comprehensive overhaul acceptable to conservatives.

The concept was thrust into the national conversation by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor infamously suggested during the GOP primary campaign that illegal immigrants might leave the U.S. voluntarily — or “self-deport” — over time if the government eliminated incentives for them to stay, including the ability to find work. Romney was responding to a question about how to address the problem of undocumented residents short of forcible government roundups and deportations.

The remark was ridiculed by Democrats and later credited with costing Romney the Hispanic support he needed to run competitively against President Barack Obama. But the bipartisan House immigration working group is developing a proposal designed to make self-deportation an attractive option for undocumented immigrants as they navigate what would presumably be a completely new legal framework. The plan was detailed by a Republican congressional aide familiar with the House working group’s negotiations.

As I reported Monday, this new system would require illegal immigrants who want to legalize to plead guilty to breaking the law and accept a sentence of probation in federal court. The arduous path to citizenship also would mandate that newly legalized immigrants pay fines and back taxes. However, undocumented immigrants who either couldn’t afford or simply didn’t want to pay penalties that might run in the tens of thousands of dollars could avoid doing so. Full story

Obama Telegraphs Health Care Vulnerability; Can GOP Capitalize?

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters File Photo)

Think Obamacare couldn’t possibly re-emerge as a campaign issue Republicans can use against Democrats? Think President Barack Obama isn’t concerned?

If you answered “no” to those questions, then you must have missed the president’s Tuesday news conference, when he offered a long and windy answer to a straight-forward question from NBC’s Chuck Todd about the difficulty the administration is having implementing the Affordable Care Act. The president disagreed with the premise of the question, and essentially argued that implementation of his landmark health care law has been so successful that the public doesn’t realize how much it’s helping them.

“For the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, they’re already experiencing most of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act even if they don’t know it,” Obama said, as a part of an answer that ran nearly 1,200 words.

It can hardly encourage congressional Democrats that Obama’s main sales pitch is that nobody has noticed a law that is supposed to improve the access, quality and price of one of the most important services they’ll need throughout their lives. Maybe this is why Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., among the chief architects of the law, has referred to its implementation as a train wreck. Full story

House Plan: Illegal Immigrants Sentenced to Probation

House immigration negotiators believe they might have found a way to soften conservative criticism directed at a proposal that would provide millions of illegal immigrants with a pathway to citizenship.

The House immigration working group has tentatively settled on a plan that would require illegal immigrants to appear in federal court and plead guilty to breaking U.S. immigration law. Illegal immigrants would be required to complete this step before embarking on a conditional pathway to citizenship that would take at least a decade. In fact, illegal immigrants would essentially be granted legal status when a federal judge sentences them to “probation” for illegally crossing the border.

“The legal process in the House bill is stiffer to emphasize that the law was broken, and to [recognize] the need to uphold the rule of law,” said a Republican congressional aide familiar with the House immigration working group’s negotiations. Full story

About That Health Care Bill Revolt

Much was made last week when House Republican leadership failed to garner enough support for legislation that would have stripped funding from one Obamacare program to shore up another.

There they go again, the D.C. commentariat uttered, in reference to the GOP leadership’s inability to corral their rebellious conservatives and move a bill that was intended to show the voting public not just what Republicans are against — in this case, the Affordable Care Act — but what they are for. The legislation proposes to divert up to $3.7 billion from the Affordable Care Act’s Prevention and Public Health Fund to bolster the Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan, which is facing implementation difficulties.

But the real story behind what appeared to be a typical GOP leadership problem of inability to build a consensus was the debate the House majority has been having with itself over how to handle Obamacare as implementation of the law accelerates between now and the 2014 midterm elections. As I reported, there is an honest philosophical disagreement over the best way to make voters realize, from the point of view of the Republicans, just how bad Obamacare is now that full implementation is under way. Full story