The House passed a bill that would prevent the IRS from imposing tax penalties on former hostages and prisoners held against their will overseas. The bill passed 219-184 with one lone Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), voting against it.
The bill would do far more than forgive tax penalties. The legislation authorizes the secretary of the treasury to remove the tax-exempt status of non-profit groups who the secretary believes, engage in terrorism or terrorism-supporting activities.
Naturally, the left and the spidery network of nonprofit groups that support their causes are hysterically claiming that this means that nonprofit climate change advocacies, pro-abortion groups, and other nonprofits that Republicans don't like will lose their tax-exempt status.
First of all, the hysteria is unjustified. There is zero chance the Senate will take this legislation up this term. Secondly, the idea that the treasury secretary is going to yank the tax-exempt status for any group that isn't proven to support terrorism is balmy.
The reason it won't happen is simple: reciprocity. Republicans will not be in power forever. And when Democrats are back on top, any move to try to kill groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council or the ACLU would result in reciprocal punitive action against conservative nonprofits.
It doesn't matter. The left is in full hysteria mode.
“This bill is an authoritarian play by Republicans to expand the sweeping powers of the executive branch, to go after political enemies and stifle political dissent,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said.
Jayapal and her pals on the left didn't complain about those "sweeping powers of the executive branch" when Biden was president. It's smoke coming out of the nether regions of Democrats.
This from the far-left site The Lever illustrates the misdirection and stupidity of opposition to this bill.
The law could chill free speech by creating financial pressure on organizations that rely on their tax-exempt status to operate effectively. Under the Treasury’s discretion, the bill could be wielded against projects backed by political or corporate interests; for example, groups like WE ACT who oppose oil and gas development could be accused of obstructing critical infrastructure.
"Obstructing critical infrastructure" is not terrorism or a terrorism-supporting activity. A treasury secretary who used that justification to remove the tax-exempt status from groups promoting climate change would be laughed out of Washington.
Yes, but it COULD happen. I suppose in an alternate reality where Republicans are Nazis and Democrats are heroic warriors for justice... oh, wait. Democrats already believe that. No wonder they ignorantly oppose this bill.
The bill would create a new category of “terrorist supporting organizations,” according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service of a previous version of the legislation. This category is defined as any organization the Treasury Secretary designates as having provided material support to a terrorist organization in the past three years.
“We think this legislation is an overreach,” said Jenn Holcomb, vice president of government affairs at the Council on Foundations. “It would allow the Secretary of the Treasury to designate a 501c nonprofit as a terrorist organization at their discretion. And our concern is it doesn’t have enough in there to really ensure that a nonprofit understands the reasoning that a secretary designated as such.”
The keyword that bothers rational people like Holcomb who oppose the legislation is "discretion." Discretion is power, and giving the treasury secretary — any treasury secretary — that kind of power is worrisome.
It's doubtful that, if the Senate takes this bill up next year (assuming it passes the House again in basically the same form), it will survive a floor vote without some kind of break on the treasury secretary's discretion.
The brouhaha over this law is manufactured. Even if nonprofits are dumb enough to believe that the incoming treasury secretary will actually declare a group like the Citizens Climate Lobby a terrorist or terrorist-supporting organization, they can't really think that the courts and the rest of the left will stand still and take it. The nonprofit industry knows the left has its back.
The trouble is that groups that support Hamas or other terrorist groups will get a pass. And that's on the Republicans. They could have written the bill with far more care. As it is, the legislation won't pass this year or perhaps even next year either.
