(REDLANDS) – Today the Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, rejected the apology by the IRS for targeting tax-exempt groups for further review during the 2012 election cycle and demanded the immediate resignations of all of those involved in the deliberate harassment of Tea Party Patriots and similar groups.
News reports indicated that Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups at the IRS, blamed the targeting of organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their tax-exempt applications on “low-level workers in Cincinnati.
"The IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power,” said Marilyn Snyder of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots. "This deliberate targeting and harassment of tea party groups reaches a new low in illegal government activity and overreach. It is suspicious that the activity of these ‘low-level workers’ was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it occurred."
President Obama must also apologize for his administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grassroots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2010, 2011, and 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again.
We reject a simple apology that does nothing to alleviate the danger of this happening again. Only immediate and public actions on the part of the IRS and the president will suffice.
"We demand the immediate resignation of all complicit in this activity and insist Congress investigate," Snyder said.
The Redlands Tea Party Patriots is part of a national grassroots coalition with more than 3,400 locally organized chapters and more than 15 million supporters nationwide.
Tea Party Patriots is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.
Late Monday, the Redlands Tea Party Patriots, in an e-mail to nearly 1,500 people on its e-mail list, to attend a Tuesday noon protest at the IRS office in downtown San Bernardino, 290 N. D. Street.
Visit us online at http://www.redlandsteapartypatriots.com/.For further information, please contact us at info@RedlandsTeaParty.com.
