IRS Official In Charge of Abusing Non-Profits Now In Charge of ObamaCare

I don’t really have anything new, other than fresh outrage, to add to the news about IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Ingram turns out not to be another lifelong Obama loyalist or even partisan Democrat campaigner, which is welcome news. She has been around the IRS for decades, according to an official agency bio of her. That’s less welcome news. Someone around the agency for that long had to have known how deeply wrong it was to abuse citizens as the IRS did.

Since July 2004, Ingram has been serving as Deputy Commissioner of the Tax Exempt/Government Entities Division (TE/GE). Ingram began her career with the IRS in the former Tax Litigation Division in 1982. She became Employee Plans Litigation Counsel in 1987, providing litigation coordination nationwide for employee benefit cases. In 1992, Ingram became Deputy Associate Chief Counsel, Employee Benefits and Exempt Organizations (EBEO), where she served until her 1994 appointment as Associate Chief Counsel, EBEO. As part of the IRS Modernization program, Ingram was appointed in 1999 to the new position of Division Counsel/Associate Chief Counsel, TE/GE, where she was responsible for providing legal services to the TE/GE Division and its customers as well as other parts of the IRS.

So she isn’t a Tommy Vietor. Nevertheless, her office abused patriots who became engaged in the political process because they love their country. She was handed massive bonuses to the tune of over $100,000 during the abuse years. And is now on track to head IRS’ ObamaCare enforcement.

This won’t do. She needs to be testifying and may need to lawyer up. It’s not possible that a couple of rogue employees ran such a widespread and granular program of abuse. It had to have buy-in from echelons within and above the Cincinnati office, and we know that it did. IRS officials in Washington participated in it.

IRS should never have been involved in our health care. Ever. Of all the horrible ideas Democrats have come up with, putting the IRS essentially between citizen and doctor may be the absolute worst. The House repealed ObamaCare Thursday, again. If Republicans can take the Senate next year and hold it long enough to see a replacement for Obama elected, it can still be repealed in full and it should be.