A modestly sized group gathered outside of the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday to demand greater accountability amongst those responsible for the tax-exempt division’s inequitable scrutiny of conservative organizations during the 2012 elections, behaviors the IRS has admitted were "inappropriate."
"The agents and employees of the IRS who should be public servants, have instead been using their organization, their agency as a political weapon … and it has silenced speech of people around this country," said Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots.
"That’s why were here today, we want to remind people around the country that the IRS is not a political weapon, and we want to remind people that it’s happening not just in Cincinnati, Ohio," Martin said. "We demand that the IRS be audited, we want a full investigation, and every single person involved must be held accountable."
Martin, who in 2010 was named one the "100 Most Influential People in the World" by Time magazine, was joined by a group of speakers that included Lisa Miller, of Tea Party WDC, and Andrew Langer, president of the Institute for Liberty. They took turns addressing the crowd to express outrage at the IRS’ behavior and call for accountability, while also noting that the main problem was "big government."
Many in attendance expressed frustration at what they felt was an inadequate response from the administration.
The IRS acknowledged that they applied stricter scrutiny to organizations applying for tax-exempt status if their applications included words such as "tea party" or "patriot." President Barack Obama asked for the resignation of the acting commissioner, Steven Miller and promised he would take steps to ensure "nothing like this happens again."
"The bottom line is the man was leaving within the next two weeks anyway, so it was merely trying to put a dress on a pig," Langer told the Washington Free Beacon.
"We must find out how far this went," Martin said. "A simple resignation of an employee who was already planning to resign anyway is not enough, the people who are responsible must be held accountable."
They expressed similar concern over the recent revelation that Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS official previously in charge of the tax-exempt division, now acts as the director of the agency’s Affordable Care Act office.
"I think Sarah Hall Ingram needs to be investigated thoroughly," Martin told the Free Beacon, noting that Hall Ingram and the IRS can no longer be trusted to impartially enforce health care. "Steven Miller was saying … before the Senate that this was bad customer service. Well, I think it’s way more than ‘bad customer service.’"
Jack Moss, of Arlington, Va., came to the rally hoping for the same thing.
"The IRS has been allowed to run amok," Moss said. "It’s time for people who were in positions of responsibility … to be held accountable for the decisions they either took, or approved, or acquiesced in, whatever it was and heads should roll."
The protest was planned over the weekend in "coordination with the Cincinnati Tea Party," which was protesting in front of the IRS’s Cincinnati office at the same time.
As the group protested, the last two individuals to serve as commissioners of the IRS, Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller, appeared before Senate Finance Committee.