Obama’s National Security Force Becomes a Reality
CommentaryAlong strict party lines, with Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote, the U.S. Senate passed the Democrats’ misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” on Aug. 7, which they claim is “a landmark climate, health care and tax bill,” and which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calls “life-changing legislation.” The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill also along party lines on Aug. 12 after a limited floor debate. Considerable attention, especially by Republicans and independent media, has been focused on a key tax provision that will provide $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service to fund 87,000 new IRS agents. Pelosi may have been right about the legislation being “life-changing,” as anyone who has endured an IRS audit can attest. And adding 87,000 new IRS agents will ultimately change a lot of lives of unsuspecting Americans well into the future. But is there more to this than just the scary sound-bite? Are there underlying ulterior motives long pursued by the Democrats associated with this expansion of the IRS? During his presidential campaign on July 2, 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech in Colorado that touched on his ideas for national service and national security in which he proposed a novel idea: the creation of a “national security force.” His words (emphasis added): “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Could a well-armed and expanded IRS be what Obama had in mind? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) bangs the gavel after the House of Representatives voted 220–207 to pass the Inflation Reduction Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Aug. 12, 2022. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images) Let us examine the topic. The Democrats’ Fixation on Nationalized Healthcare Obama’s 2008 speech proposing a civilian national security force was swept down the memory hole with the aid of the legacy media, and he was never pressed to explain just what he meant by that proposal. But as is the case with much of the policies pushed by Democrats, they never give up on their cockamamie ideas and work feverishly over time to implement them in federal law even when thwarted initially by Republicans and the people. Take Obamacare, for example. Much of the concepts in the original 2,300-page law were formulated during the Clinton administration. Remember Hillary Clinton’s failed “healthcare task force” and her proposed Healthcare Security Act of 1993 (also known as Hillarycare)? That task force developed a 1,342-page bill, which proposed a universal healthcare system that ultimately went down to defeat in Congress after a national outcry from concerned citizens. While Obamacare was modeled after liberal Republican Mitt Romney’s 2006 Massachusetts plan, many of the basic concepts were similar to those initially proposed in Hillarycare: a requirement for all Americans to have healthcare insurance, cooperatives established to sell healthcare with federal subsidies for the unemployed and part-time employees, and federal standards established for healthcare plans. Nationalized healthcare was, after all, a lifetime objective of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), as his speech in July 2009 detailed his entire life pursuit of “healthcare for all Americans.” Thus, it was no surprise that Massachusetts would be the incubator for the Democrats’ national healthcare policy. There is a continuity of effort over many years—from Kennedy’s long healthcare advocacy to Bill Clinton and Hillarycare to Romney (in heavily Democrat Massachusetts) to Obama and Obamacare. As this example shows, the Democrats relentlessly pursue their policy objectives over decades as necessary. Is Obama’s “civilian national security force” a similar long-term objective that is being pursued by the Democrats? And is the IRS the agency that the Democrats have planned all along to bring it to reality? Obama and the IRS Obama had a penchant for weaponizing federal agencies against his political opponents. For example, his EPA implemented onerous regulations on the U.S. coal industry, leading to plant shutdowns without the consent of Congress. The American Center for Law and Justice reported that “during the shutdown of 2013, the Obama Administration turned our public lands and war memorials into political weapons, denying veterans access to the very monuments built in their honor.” President Barack Obama and White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, right, react to a reporter’s question as they leave the Treasury Department in Washington on Jan. 16, 2013. (Charles Dharapak, AP Photo) And then, there was the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups and the leaking of private information from various conservative groups such as the National Organization for Marriage, as reported by the New York Post. In that same article, Dr. Ben Carson was quoted as
Udumbara
Commentary
Along strict party lines, with Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote, the U.S. Senate passed the Democrats’ misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” on Aug. 7, which they claim is “a landmark climate, health care and tax bill,” and which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calls “life-changing legislation.”
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill also along party lines on Aug. 12 after a limited floor debate. Considerable attention, especially by Republicans and independent media, has been focused on a key tax provision that will provide $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service to fund 87,000 new IRS agents.
Pelosi may have been right about the legislation being “life-changing,” as anyone who has endured an IRS audit can attest. And adding 87,000 new IRS agents will ultimately change a lot of lives of unsuspecting Americans well into the future. But is there more to this than just the scary sound-bite? Are there underlying ulterior motives long pursued by the Democrats associated with this expansion of the IRS?
During his presidential campaign on July 2, 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech in Colorado that touched on his ideas for national service and national security in which he proposed a novel idea: the creation of a “national security force.”
His words (emphasis added): “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
Could a well-armed and expanded IRS be what Obama had in mind?
Let us examine the topic.
The Democrats’ Fixation on Nationalized Healthcare
Obama’s 2008 speech proposing a civilian national security force was swept down the memory hole with the aid of the legacy media, and he was never pressed to explain just what he meant by that proposal. But as is the case with much of the policies pushed by Democrats, they never give up on their cockamamie ideas and work feverishly over time to implement them in federal law even when thwarted initially by Republicans and the people.
Take Obamacare, for example. Much of the concepts in the original 2,300-page law were formulated during the Clinton administration. Remember Hillary Clinton’s failed “healthcare task force” and her proposed Healthcare Security Act of 1993 (also known as Hillarycare)? That task force developed a 1,342-page bill, which proposed a universal healthcare system that ultimately went down to defeat in Congress after a national outcry from concerned citizens.
While Obamacare was modeled after liberal Republican Mitt Romney’s 2006 Massachusetts plan, many of the basic concepts were similar to those initially proposed in Hillarycare: a requirement for all Americans to have healthcare insurance, cooperatives established to sell healthcare with federal subsidies for the unemployed and part-time employees, and federal standards established for healthcare plans.
Nationalized healthcare was, after all, a lifetime objective of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), as his speech in July 2009 detailed his entire life pursuit of “healthcare for all Americans.” Thus, it was no surprise that Massachusetts would be the incubator for the Democrats’ national healthcare policy. There is a continuity of effort over many years—from Kennedy’s long healthcare advocacy to Bill Clinton and Hillarycare to Romney (in heavily Democrat Massachusetts) to Obama and Obamacare.
As this example shows, the Democrats relentlessly pursue their policy objectives over decades as necessary. Is Obama’s “civilian national security force” a similar long-term objective that is being pursued by the Democrats? And is the IRS the agency that the Democrats have planned all along to bring it to reality?
Obama and the IRS
Obama had a penchant for weaponizing federal agencies against his political opponents. For example, his EPA implemented onerous regulations on the U.S. coal industry, leading to plant shutdowns without the consent of Congress. The American Center for Law and Justice reported that “during the shutdown of 2013, the Obama Administration turned our public lands and war memorials into political weapons, denying veterans access to the very monuments built in their honor.”
And then, there was the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups and the leaking of private information from various conservative groups such as the National Organization for Marriage, as reported by the New York Post. In that same article, Dr. Ben Carson was quoted as saying he was audited by the IRS for the first time ever after he criticized Obama “to his face at the National Prayer Breakfast.” Just a coincidence, or a harbinger of things to come?
Who could forget the uproar over the antics of Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of Exempt Organizations, who “flagged a disproportionate number of conservative groups’ tax-exempt status applications” for special processing and was responsible for “substantial … mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia” in handling those applications, as even CNN reported. She was even held in contempt of Congress for not providing requested records or answering questions during a committee hearing. Yet, an IRS internal investigation let her off the hook in 2015 to the outrage of many conservative groups targeted by the IRS and Republicans in Congress. She is now retired and receiving her full pension for her federal service (as well as her service to the Democrat Party!).
The IRS weathered that particular storm although it was a close-run thing, as Republicans targeted the IRS’s enforcement budget and subsequently reduced the IRS’s overall funding profile over the next eight years, as reported by left-leaning and pro-IRS ProPublica in 2018. Democrats and their media allies have subsequently been “laying some love” on the IRS by complaining about their antiquated computer systems and networks, understaffing, and long delays in processing income tax returns. But even their puff pieces, like this one from TheHill.com in April of this year, sheepishly report that the IRS is “one of the most hated federal agencies.” Ya think?
Connecting these and other dots, a 2013 Fiscal Times op-ed opined “how federal workers became Obama’s private army.” The article concluded with this statement: “When law enforcement and tax enforcement become rankly political, Americans can no longer trust in their federal government.” And to think that this was written before the FISA abuses by Obama’s DOJ and FBI associated with the Crossfire Hurricane hoax investigation of Donald Trump became known. Trust in federal government agencies has continued its downward trend over the last few years, as reported in June by Pew Research.
The weaponization of the federal bureaucracy against Democrat political opponents became standard operating procedure during the Obama years. And Joe Biden and the Democrats have apparently picked up where Obama left off with respect to the major expansion of the IRS that is coming, not to mention the DOJ-approved FBI raid on Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida on Aug. 9.
Conservative and independent media have also recently reported that the IRS has been recruiting armed special agents who qualify as law enforcement officers, as reported here. On page 17 of the FY 2021 IRS Criminal Investigation Annual Report, IRS special agents are boldly pictured firing on human-shaped targets on a firing range. And Just the News reported on Aug. 3 that the IRS has already stockpiled over 5 million rounds of ammunition, including $725,000 worth purchased just this year.
While some regard the months-long recruiting of armed IRS agents, range qualifications of special agents on human-shaped targets, and IRS stockpiling over 5 million rounds of ammunition as disconnected from the adding of 87,000 new IRS agents under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, consider the long-term arc of Democrat pursuit of their various policy objectives. All of these issues are in fact connected regardless of their timing because it is the end result that counts: the creation of a gigantic “national security force” by any other name. And it appears the IRS will field a large portion of that force. The only issue is the percentage of those new IRS agents who will be armed law enforcement officers.
Concluding Thoughts
Obama once proposed a “civilian national security force” that has never been adequately defined. Under the cover of “fighting inflation,” are the Democrats achieving that objective? Is the coming plus-up of 87,000 new IRS agents, at least some of whom will be armed law enforcement officers, something about which Americans should be worried? Should the fact that the IRS will have more agents than there are U.S. Marines be of concern? Should Americans be concerned that, according to the Washington Free Beacon, the much-reviled IRS is slated to become “larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined”?
Frontpagemag.com has it right: the IRS could very well be “a Gestapo in the making”—which is probably what Obama envisioned in the first place.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
