Tim Kaine: “People need to be sacked because of this IRS scandal.”

I agree completely with Tim Kaine, who spoke on WTOP this morning and said:

Yeah, this really is inexcusable, and kind of raises the question, “What does it take to get fired in this town?” People need to be sacked because of this IRS scandal. It’s a little sensitive, because the White House does not have direct personnel authority to sack people within the IRS, and there’s a reason that the IRS is insulated from the IRS politically, but...we’ve got to get to the bottom of it, and we’ve got to make sure that those responsible – or those who didn’t supervise in the way they should have –  lose their jobs.

Now, the commissioner of the IRS at the time this happened was a President Bush appointee who’s already gone, but others who were in the line of command are still there and they ought to be losing their jobs…Anybody who was aware of this, and either participated or allowed it to happen, without throwing on the emergency brake and pulling the fire alarm, they’re really not fit to continue to serve.

No argument here, even if one of the underlying causes of this situation was the proliferation of political groups following the horrendous Citizens United ruling, and generally speaking our abysmally weak/screwed-up campaign finance laws in this country. While we do what Tim Kaine said, we also need to be addressing those other issues as well!

UPDATE: It turns out the IRS “also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status…Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants.”

UPDATE #2: Also, it turns out that “Congress requires the IRS to review every application for tax-exempt status to weed out organizations that are partisan, political, or that generate private gain. Congress has imposed this requirement on the IRS, and its predecessor agencies, since 1913.” Hmmm.