Congress afraid of the White House?

By WND Staff

Congress may be ignoring the legal questions of the 1996 politically
motivated audit of Western Journalism Center, parent company of
WorldNetDaily, and other organizations critical of the administration in
an attempt to avoid a confrontation with the White House, according to
one outspoken congressional aide.

“The current Congress doesn’t seem to want to tackle any issue that
is going to put it in a head-to-head match with the administration,”
said Tom Lizardo, chief of staff to Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. “What it
comes down to is there is absolutely no will by 218 or more members of
this Congress to get into a fight with this administration.”

Although Lizardo mentioned that 218 or more members — some of whom
would have to be Republican — would not want to face off with the White
House, he added he didn’t want to imply the Republican Congress doesn’t
want to get into an argument with the White House.

“There are certainly more Republican members who would be willing to
stand up to the administration than there are Democratic members, but
when you put them together, I don’t think it comes anywhere close to a
majority,” Lizardo said. “If the administration takes a really strong
position on just about anything, you’re not going to get a majority of
the Congress to decide that it’s going to fulfill its constitutional
responsibility. You’re going to get a majority that’s going to decide
to run and hide.”

For Paul and his crew, an example of Congress not fulfilling its
“constitutional responsibility” came during the last Congress when Paul
introduced House Joint Resolution 116 which would have abolished the
income tax in this country. Not one colleague in Congress signed on to
H.J. Res. 116 as a co-sponsor. A current example in the 106th Congress
is H.R. 1148,
Paul’s bill to abolish the board of governors of the Federal Reserve
System, the Federal Reserve banks and the Federal Reserve Act. To date,
no co-signer has supported this bill, either.

But why does Congress seem to be uninterested in the politically
motivated audits of Western Journalism Center and other organizations
and individuals critical of the White House?

“I think that part of the problem may be that people who are under
audit or under extreme scrutiny tend to complain a lot about it the
minute they go under audit or extreme scrutiny,” Lizardo said. “I think
we all have to take the responsibility that even though I’m not being
audited, I’m going to complain about it.”

“What about the Christian Coalition?” asked Lizardo who was
commenting how the IRS turned down Christian Coalition for tax-exempt
status. “What just happened to them? On the technical law, were the
IRS actions technically correct? That’s a good avoidance of the real
issue. How many churches go out and participate in politics but tend to
be Democratic? What happens to them? Do they get audited by the IRS?
Do they lose their (non-profit) status? Do they get treated the way the
Christian Coalition or the Western
Journalism Center (get treated)?”

Lizardo added that, in his view, the bigger issue is whether or not
Americans will continue to allow a federal government to maintain an
agency such as the Internal Revenue Service which has been repeatedly
abused by individual leaders.

“This has been going on at least since the Kennedy administration
that I know of, and it’s been done by Republican presidents and
Democratic presidents,” Lizardo said. “To believe otherwise is sort of
like living in a fantasy world.”

Although critical of Congress as a whole, Lizardo pointed out there
are good people in Congress who don’t fight every battle. However, on
this issue, Paul has spoken up numerous times. Lizardo explained,
though, that Paul doesn’t focus on one particular instance, or problem.
He focuses on the problem as a whole. Thus, Western Journalism Center’s
audit may not be the single cause he’s working hard for, but he is
working to get Congress to address the broader problem of the IRS being
used for political purposes.

“The notion of an IRS is a corrupt notion which leads to a
centralized government, which leads to abuse of power, and that’s what
we try to spend our time talking about rather than saying ‘save this one
entity’ because you know what? If suddenly, we raise enough heck and
they decide to back off one audit, you might say the problem’s over. We
wouldn’t,” Lizardo said.

During the 1996 audit of Western Journalism Center, Thomas
Cederquist, the IRS agent involved in the case, had said the audit was
of a political nature and the decisions for the audit were to be made at
high levels of government. Although Cederquist was removed from the
case, Western Journalism Center, through its Freedom of Information Act
request, received documents from the Treasury Department that, once
again, indicated the audit was politically motivated.

The heavily redacted 1997 Treasury Department Report titled,
“Questionable Exempt Organization Activity,” says in part, “The audit
originated from a taxpayer who faxed a letter to the White House
expressing his concern over a one-page advertisement paid for by WCJ
(Western Center for Journalism) that asked for contributions to
investigate (White House deputy counsel Vincent) Foster’s death. The
fax was forwarded to the EO (Exempt Organizations) National Office and
then to the respective Key District Office for appropriate actions.”

The taxpayer mentioned in the documents is Paul Venze.

Commenting once more on Rep. Paul’s thoughts on the abuse of the
IRS, Lizardo said, “As long as the income tax exists, there will have to
be an agency like the IRS. … The founding fathers stated quite clearly
that when you have agencies like that, they will abuse their power. The
IRS, has and will continue — as long as it exists — to abuse its
power. So the notion that somehow we will have a reform of the IRS,
maintain the income tax and some semblance of the IRS by whatever name,
and to not have these abuses of power, we think is patently absurd.”

Earlier stories:

Front Page