I was going to post something about this the day I read it, but I had filled the tubes with so many discouraging thoughts about Lebanon that I held off. But it's probably worth putting out, because one should always be aware of the many ways that a president can subvert Congress's intentions.
Unable to force a repeal of the estate tax into law, W. has taken the backdoor approach of firing nearly half of the estate tax lawyers at the IRS. As David Cay Johnson reported on 7/23 in the NY Times:
Estate tax lawyers are the most productive tax law enforcement personnel at the I.R.S., according to Mr. Brown [an I.R.S. deputy commissioner]. For each hour they work, they find an average of $2,200 of taxes that people owe the government.
[...]
[S]ix years ago, . . . the I.R.S. said that 85 percent of large taxable gifts it audited shortchanged the government. The I.R.S. said then that it would hire three more lawyers just to audit taxable gifts of $1 million or more.
Where did the MBA president learn that firing employees who generate $2200/hr in revenues makes economic sense?
Noam Scheiber, whose post on The Plank originally called Johnson's article to my attention, put it this way:
I guess the argument for ignoring Congress on things like NSA eavesdropping and treatment of detainees is that the president has the authority as commander-in-chief to prosecute the war on terror however he sees fit. Well, what's the argument for ignoring Congress when it comes to tax policy? It's looking more and more like the administration thinks it can do whatever it wants, on whatever issue it wants. Not that this should surprise anyone.
An editorial in today's NY Times points out another subterfuge:
The underlying fact of the matter is that the I.R.S. hasn't released the data that would allow researchers -- and the public -- to verify whether cutting back on estate-tax audits represents sound tax enforcement. A research organization at Syracuse University, called Trac, used to routinely request and receive comprehensive I.R.S. audit figures -- by size of the estate, the number of hours spent and the amount of extra recommended tax.
Researchers analyzed the data and posted it on the organization's Web site, so the public had a continuing sense of the I.R.S's fairness, efficiency and effectiveness. But in 2004, the I.R.S. stopped giving Trac the data. In 2006, a federal court ordered the agency to provide the requested records. But the information released since then has not been comprehensive. If the I.R.S. wants to avoid suspicion that its actions are politically motivated, it should release all the data that researchers need to evaluate its actions.
Indeed.
4 comments:
We want to be careful about statements such as this:
-I guess the argument for ignoring Congress on things like NSA eavesdropping and treatment of detainees is that the president has the authority as commander-in-chief to prosecute the war on terror however he sees fit.-
As Tom Foley pointed out the other night on TV, the President is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Services, but not the Commander in Chief of the country -- even in wartime.
Is the NSA considered a part of the "armed services?" What presidents have been doing is setting up quasi-millitary civilian agencies that they can control without the oversight of the Congress or Supreme Court. The founders intended co-equal branches of govern with each one checking the power of the other. Supposedly Congress has control over over the budget of the CIA, but it's unclear how much oversight and control they really exercise. Presidents have had a tendency to set up their own spy agencies whose budgets aren't controlled by Congress (It was Harry Truman who gave us the CIA.) Under the guise of "national security" they've been able to put through things like spying on American citizens which isn't really an "armed service" function in the sense the founders intended it.
Norm Ornstein et al have come out with a book called "The Broken Branch" making the case that the legislators haven't peformed their function as the founders intended and the executive has been usurping legislative powers for the executive branch and ignoring the Supreme Court in the bargain.
A worrisome trend.
Well said, TC.
My father has long noted the rise in power of the president at the expense of Congress, too.
I have wondered about what would seem a fundamental point of the Constitution for a long time, now. How is it that the Congress's exclusive right to declare war got so easily overcome? Has Congress ever declared war since WWII?
I know I'm risking the challenge of the "all steps necessary" resolution that Congress granted W concerning Iraq. I'd say this wasn't a formal declaration of war, and further blame Congress for bailing on this one, too.
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I remember seeing a book, a while back, called The Imperial Presidency.
Having just Amazoned it, I see that it's by Junior Schlesinger, and he has released a new edition, to include W -- two reasons to keep an eye out for it.
The Ornstein book sounds good, too. Here's the Amazon page on that one, if you like. The "Search Inside" aspect of Ornstein's book is not yet available, although it is for Schlesinger's.
And as for your paraphrase of Tom Foley, I don't think Dick Cheney would agree. ;^)
Broken branch -- broken link.
I tried your link to Amazon page to see the Ornstein link, but what I got was a menu for setting up my own blog and nothing about Amazon or the book. Wazzup with that?
Wazzup is that I screwed up -- forgot to put anything in for the actual link, which made the link point to itself, which Blogger handled by recognizing that you don't have the right to jump to a page from the context of being me, and so brought you to its home page.
Sorry about that.
Here's the real link to Ornstein's book.
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