IRS’s illegal alien tax credit plan

If this isn’t the last straw in the funding debate over President Obama’s unlawful executive amnesty decree, then there is no outrage that will move Senate Democrats to some form of sanity.

{mosads}Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen told the Senate Finance Committee that the IRS is going to give illegals who benefit from Obama’s executive amnesty billions of dollars of tax credits for the years they worked here illegally. That’s right, illegal workers will be able to claim back tax credits for up to three years in a move that could total tens of thousands of dollars into their pockets.

I am personally sympathetic to those who come to America for a better way of life. That is the way it should be: Our nation is a beacon of freedom and opportunity that attracts people of ambition, strength and character.

However, our federal government’s public assistance policy turns this ethos on its head, instead encouraging people to come to our nation illegally under the guise of getting something for nothing. Hardly the values that our nation should seek to foster.

Please recognize that this is not the fault of those who have come here illegally. It is the fault of government policy that seeks to create a generational dependency cycle for cynical political advantage.

How else can one explain the eagerness with which the IRS is accommodating illegals in seeking a retroactive tax jackpot?

What is particularly galling is that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a tax policy that allows lower-income workers to get a refund that far exceeds the amount of money withheld from their paychecks. So, amnestied illegals will not only be getting money they paid into the system back, but also a very fat bonus payment on top of it.

Remember that this is the same “benevolent” IRS that has made a practice of targeting conservative groups and donors by delaying applications and putting their tax returns under extra scrutiny. Yet somehow, Koskinen says that they want to err on the side of giving illegals the benefit of the doubt since the law is purportedly vague.

Not surprisingly, it likely never occurred to anyone that you had to spell out that someone working in the country illegally, whom the president waved a magic wand and suddenly made legal, would be ineligible for benefits retroactively. But the new, nice IRS apparently wants to make certain that they didn’t offend these new entrants into the entitlement class — at least not until they register to vote.

If this IRS action does not steel the resolve of the Republican majority in the House and Senate to take every step, including allowing Obama to shut down the nonessential portions of the Department of Homeland Security (about 15 percent of the department and no law enforcement functions would be affected), then I don’t know what will.

Rather than submit any new funding bill to the Senate, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) needs to tell Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the House has done its work, and let the Democrats stew over the next couple of weeks in the public disapprobation that is guaranteed to follow this latest benefit scam.

If Republicans play hardball, Senate Democrats who claim to be centrists will stew in the public’s outrage and will pay the political price for toeing Obama’s amnesty line — but that’s a big “if.”

Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government.