Venango County Tea Party Patriots

A non-partisan, non-profit, non-member, association dedicated to educating the public and promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free market economics, and all other lawful activities.

regulations

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Obama Seeks to Weaponize IRS

In 2010 millions of American tea-party constitutionalists, to include the GOP’s Christian base, united in a remarkable grass-roots effort to rein in our unbridled federal government and return it to its expressly limited constitutional confines. As a result, an unprecedented number of counter-constitutionalist lawmakers (read: liberal Democrats) were swept from office.

The Obama administration wasn’t going to take this lying down. Whether it was by tacit approval or via direct order remains largely immaterial. The president quickly and unlawfully politicized the Internal Revenue Service, using it as a weapon against his political enemies. In an explosive scandal that continues to grow, the Obama IRS was caught – smoking gun in hand – intentionally targeting conservative and Christian organizations and individuals for harassment, intimidation and, ultimately, for political destruction.

Not only has Obama faced zero accountability for these arguably impeachable offenses, he has since doubled down. With jaw-dropping gall, his administration has now moved to officially weaponize the IRS against conservatives once and for all.

Despite the furor over the IRS assault on conservative groups leading up to the 2012 elections, this man – a despotic radical who’s turned our constitutional republic into one of the banana variety – has quietly released a proposed set of new IRS regulations that, if implemented, will immediately, unlawfully and permanently muzzle conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations and their individual employees. (The 501(c)(4) designation refers to the IRS code section under which social welfare organizations are regulated).

The new regulations would unconstitutionally compel a 90-day blackout period during election years in which conservative 501(c)(4) organizations – such as tea-party, pro-life and pro-family groups – would be banned from mentioning the name of any candidate for office, or even the name of any political party.

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In 2013 Regulations Cost Americans $447 M Each Day

Regulations that went into effect in 2013 cost Americans $112 billion – or $447 million for each of the 251 days the federal government was open – according to a study by the American Action Forum (AAF), which predicts that the regulatory burden will increase to $143 billion in 2014.

“That’s in part because they’re going to finalize a lot of the big proposals that they had this year and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is going to regulate existing greenhouse gases from stationary sources for the first time, and we recognize there’ll be a big price tag for that,” Sam Batkins, AAF’s research director, told CNSNews.com.

“And in January, they are going to finalize new rules for cooling water intake structures for power plants to preserve aquatic wildlife, and we’re also going to see the final push of Dodd-Frank and Affordable Care Act implementation. There are two notable Affordable Care Act rules that will be finalized.”

New regulations will also include calorie labeling for vending machines, Batkins added, even though the products sold in the machines already have nutritional information on their labels.

“You will be able to see that chocolate and fried potato chips have a lot of calories, and you will be able to see that twice when the new regulations become final, if you didn’t already know that,” he told CNSNews.com.

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141 New Rules in the First 3 Days of New Year

The website Regulations.gov lists 141 regulations that have been posted by federal agencies in the first three days of new year alone. Of these regulations, 119 are “rulemaking,” meaning they establish a new rule. Twenty-three are “non-rulemaking,” meaning the regulations does not establish a new rule.

The largest group of regulations have to do with energy and environmental issues, many of them issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. One new EPA regulation is an amendment to a rule on hazardous emissions from lead smelters.

The EPA has come under fire from lawmakers for cracking down on emissions from coal plants and other carbon-heavy fuels and materials. The agency is also working on 134 major and minor regulations that will take effect in the coming years.

In particular, the agency is under fire for a rule that will be finalized later this year capping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, effectively banning coal-fired power plants from being built.

“If these regulations go into effect, American jobs will be lost, electricity prices will soar, and economic uncertainty will grow. We need the federal government to work as a partner, not an adversary, and to invest in America’s energy future,” said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

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