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Illinois Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis told PJ Media that there should have been a “reporting chain” that alerted President Obama of the IRS singling out conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status, likening the scandal to the Bible.
“The efforts to somehow or another link this to higher-ups in the administration just has not come through and I think one of the reasons that it ended up being the way that it is is that these guys weren’t talking to anybody else. They weren’t relating to anybody else,” said Davis, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“They weren’t even reporting to the deputy in Treasury who was their direct link to upper management. They acted as if they were an agency unto themselves and had no reporting responsibility and I think that’s where they got themselves in trouble.”
Davis then related the controversy to the Parable of Talents in the Bible.
“It’s kind of like the guys in the Bible that was given talents and money to oversee. One guy got two, one got five and one got one and the fellow with the one went and hid it,” he said.
“The fellow with two did a little stuff but the fellow who had the most actually went and multiplied and if you’re a good manager and you’ve got a question that you’re not sure about, you go to the next person and I don’t think they were doing that.”
Davis also said the scandal does not compare to Watergate.
“I don’t think it’s anything similar to that. I mean, Watergate was an orchestrated move linked to the absolute highers-up in the Republican Party at the time and that’s not what this is,” Davis told PJ Media.
“This is an agency who pretty much isolated itself and made some decisions. There’s been no link to the White House. The president didn’t know anything about it. Hell, his deputy treasurer didn’t even know about it until it was revealed and they were briefed ultimately by the inspector general. So, no, I don’t think there’s any comparison.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney recently said President Obama “believes it’s entirely appropriate that some matters are not appropriate to convey to him and this is one of them.”
PJ Media asked Davis if he thinks the issue was important enough to relay to the president.
“Oh yeah. I think there should have been a reporting chain,” said Davis.
“I get upset when I find out things that my staff knew that I also needed to know and they didn’t tell me and so that upsets me to no end so I’m sure the president was dumbfounded. ‘Hey, you know, this stuff has been going on and we don’t know anything about it?’”
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