Tea Party probe has cost IRS $7.9 million so far
Source: USA Today
WASHINGTON -- The Internal Revenue Service says 255 employees have spent 97,542 hours responding to congressional investigations into the scrutiny it gave conservative political groups before the 2012 election — at a cost of at least $7.9 million.
Those numbers came in a letter from IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to two House Democrats. He said the accounting took a "conservative approach" that did not include some support staff, the press office, congressional liaisons and other top IRS officials.
The costs include $259,849 for travel. For staff time, the numbers work out to an average hourly rate of more than $79 an hour.
House Democrats seized on the cost of the investigations as evidence Republicans are "fixated" on the IRS affair. Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., who joined with Republicans to make the original request for information, said Republicans were now "wasting millions of dollars in an attempt to reignite their partisan inquiry before the November elections."
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/02/26/irs-cost-of-congressional-investigations/5831761/
and not a single indictment yet.
Here's another article, from NYT today.
Why the I.R.S. Scandal Won't Go Away
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/opinion/edsall-why-the-irs-scandal-wont-go-away.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
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There are two conclusions that can be drawn from the I.R.S.-Tea Party saga.
The first is that the losers will be the bit players. These include Lois Lerner, who resigned; the I.R.S. staffers in Cincinnati, many of whom have been forced to hire private counsel; and the generally innocuous, low-level Tea Party groups, like the Rochester Tea Party Patriots and the Acadiana Patriots in Louisiana, which have suffered questioning and delays in getting their applications for tax-exempt status approved.
The second is that the big players will in all probability skate. Karl Rove and Charles and David Koch are unlikely to see their tax-exempt political organizations reined in or to see any restraints placed on the tremendous financial clout of their 501(c) independent expenditure groups, clout made possible by their adroit use of the “social welfare” designation and by an aggressive, unyielding approach to campaign-finance law and I.R.S. regulations.
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