A report conducted by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly targeted conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status and IRS officials have publicly admitted to relying on inappropriate criteria to screen out the names of organizations that included “tea party” or “patriots” for additional scrutiny. But the New York Times reported on Sunday that some of the targeted groups may have used most of their resources to engage in political activity and backed Republican candidates for office, potentially violating the terms of the “social welfare” designation.
Under the law, 501(c)(4)s cannot be “primarily engaged” in electioneering activity. Though the guidelines for acceptable levels of political activity are unclear, organizations with such designations operate under the understanding that they are prohibited from spending more than 49 percent of their funds or time on political advocacy. Several Tea Party groups that reported unfair IRS scrutiny appear to have overstepped these bounds, the paper notes:
When CVFC, a conservative veterans’ group in California, applied for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, its biggest expenditure that year was several thousand dollars in radio ads backing a Republican candidate for Congress.
The Wetumpka Tea Party, from Alabama, sponsored training for a get-out-the-vote initiative dedicated to the “defeat of President Barack Obama” while the I.R.S. was weighing its application.
And the head of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, whose application languished with the I.R.S. for more than two years, sent out e-mails to members about Mitt Romney campaign events and organized members to distribute Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign literature.
The IRS is separately reviewing “roughly 300 tax-exempt groups that may have engaged in improper campaign activity in past years, according to agency planning documents” and lawmakers are urging the agency to reconsider the applications of much larger groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. The group told the IRS that any political ads run by the group would be “limited in amount” and “would not constitute the group’s primary purpose,” but it appears to be primarily focused on campaign activity.
As Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) explained on Fox News Sunday, while the IRS’ use of a partisan list to go after conservative groups is not justified, the law requires 501(c)(4)s to be “engaged in social welfare and not politics and campaigning.” “Crossroads was exhibit A. They were boasting about how much money they were going to raise and beat Democrats with,” Durbin said.
Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) have introduced legislation that would make permanent two tax credits aimed at reducing poverty and helping low-income and working families. Two dozen other lawmakers have signed onto the legislation, which would also expand eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit, which were originally expanded by the 2009 stimulus law and were extended temporarily by the deal to avert the fiscal cliff in January.
On Monday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), a long-time advocate of the DREAM Act, strongly rebuked a GOP witness for opposing a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents. The witness, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, rose to prominence for advising Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” immigration policy during the 2012 presidential campaign and is the architect of both Arizona’s infamous “show your papers” law (SB 1070) and the Republican Party’s harsh immigration platform. 
Lawmakers part of the so-called Senate Gang of 8 are pushing back against conservatives who are trying to exploit the Boston bombing to slow down the legislative momentum for immigration reform. On Friday, during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s first hearing on a new bipartisan immigration proposal, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said that “[g]iven the events of this week, it’s important to understand the gaps and loopholes” in the immigration system and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested that reform should primarily focus on securing the borders. 
A look at the 1996 United States Senate campaign between then Democratic U.S. Rep. Dick Durbin and Republican Illinois State Rep. Al Salvi sheds an all-too-familiar light on how the effort to prevent gun violence has become a make-or-break issue for Illinois voters in next Tuesday’s special election to fill former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr’s seat.
The inability of Americans to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy proceedings creates a system of indebtedness like the one that existed during the era of Charles Dickens, when people who couldn’t afford to pay their debts were routinely tossed into prisons, a top Democratic senator declared this week.
