Free Republic

The Internal Revenue Service has never been an agency much loved by the American people. With the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, its already bad reputation has now sunk to a new low. But the scandal raises a critical question: If the IRS can't manage an increase of 1,700 applications for tax-exempt status that the agency said spurred its targeting of conservative groups, how will the IRS handle its massive new role in implementing ObamaCare? Look at the Earned Income Tax Credit. Whether you like this refundable credit or not, the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration reported in...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) declined Friday afternoon to meet a Senate Finance Committee deadline for answering detailed questions about the origins of the IRS scandal. The questions had been submitted jointly nearly two weeks ago by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-UT). In a joint statement to Breitbart News, Baucus and Hatch said: “It’s disappointing that the IRS failed to produce any of the documents requested by the Committee. "This is an agency that revolves around making the American taxpayer meet hard deadlines each and every year when they file their taxes, oftentimes penalizing those...

WASHINGTON — Ranking Member Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, didn’t mince words. He said IRS’s decision not to notify Congress of the agency’s targeting of tea party groups was “a lie by omission” and that the man in charge at the time just “sat on that guilty knowledge.” Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Steve Miller replied, “Mr. Hatch, I did not lie.” But during Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing Hatch insisted Miller knew there was a list IRS officials were using to target conservatives when he failed to inform Congress of the abuse. Hatch said “you knew what was...

President Barack Obama will eventually raise taxes on the entire middle class because he has no plans to stop spending, the GOP’s soon-to-be senior senator tells Newsmax. And the success or failure of the president’s bid to increase tax rates for the top two percent of earners is irrelevant in the matter, said Sen. Orrin Hatch in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV. The Utah senator—who will become the senior Republican in the new Congress set to convene next week—said that Republicans are leery of increasing taxes on Americans in any income bracket because they believe Obama will spend the money...

The Obama administration’s efforts at extending executive authority were dealt a setback on Tuesday. The bipartisan Government Accountability Office flagged the administration’s end run around Congress in its July memo announcing changes to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) act, aka “welfare reform.” The GAO said that the White House needs to give Congress the chance to block its plan that permits states to tweak the work requirements that needy families must satisfy in order to receive government assistance under the program. The official word came in the form of a letter to lawmakers from GAO’s general counsel, Lynn...

A Coverup That Won’t Stay Covered by Paul Craig Roberts CNN recently reported that "the Justice Department is re-examining its investigation into the 1995 death of a federal prisoner that the victim’s family alleges was murder at the hands of the government." The victim was Kenneth Michael Trentadue. At 7 AM on August 21, 1995, officials from the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s office arrived at the new Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center for the body of a man recently picked up for parole violation who allegedly was a suicide by hanging. The astonished state officials saw a body with scalp split...

Across the country, Republicans are fighting off tea party threats while Democrats are dragged down by anti-incumbent sentiment and a president who remains unpopular in many competitive states. But on Tuesday, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch is expected to defy those trends and win re-election handily, with experience and a novice challenger helping to boost his odds. Similarly, Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel certainly has years of congressional service on his side--41 to be exact--and faces lesser-known opponents, but redistricting changes could thwart the Congressman's chances of winning.

From the Daily Caller: Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has joined his congressional colleagues in demanding Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation in the wake of Operation Fast and Furious. Hatch made the call during a Wednesday interview on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s radio show. “Well if he doesn’t cooperate with the Congress on this Fast and Furious, where one of our agents was killed because of the stupidity of this administration, then he ought to step own,” Hatch said. “He’s basically a nice man, but by gosh he’s been so partisan in that job that I’m very concerned about...

Senator Hatch promised the crowd of business leaders that if he were re-elected and became Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, he would be well-positioned to help take down the Affordable Care Act. "If we take over in the majority, we're going to try and repeal Obamacare, and see if we can get it right," he said. Hatch and Wyoming Senator John Barrasso said they were currently focused on repealing provisions of the law including a tax on the medical device industry and on health insurance providers. Democratic Utah state Senator Pat Jones is on the Salt Lake Chamber's Health...

Sarah Palin has just announced that she is endorsing Sen. Orrin Hatch in the Utah Senate primary. Palin revealed this on Greta Van Susteren’s show. She emphasized Hatch’s record and position on balancing the budget........"

Sarah Palin said she is joining the ranks for Mark Levin and Sean Hannity to endorse Orrin Hatch for Senate in Utah, which will undoubtedly cause some friction for those who are fighting so hard to defeat him in Utah:

It’s probably not the endorsement that incumbent Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch needs right now, as the Republican is locked up in a primary challenge from Dan Liljenquist. But Saturday on Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC show, former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the co-author of “Life Among the Cannibals: A Political Career, a Tea Party Uprising, and the End of Governing As We Know It,” pleaded with Utah voters to keep their senior senator. Specter told Harris-Perry that the current climate in Washington, D.C. isn’t lending itself to electoral success for moderate incumbents, which he said has been the focus of a crusade...

Former Republican Rep. Tom Davis told The Hill newspaper: “The middle is getting squeezed,” but his comment vastly understates the crisis in the capital. Activists in both parties have declared war on moderates. The ideological gap between the two parties is widening rapidly. Paralysis is pervasive. Political scientist Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, who studies voting patterns, told the National Journal: “We are clearly as conflicted as we’ve been since 1905. The parties are, I think, completely dysfunctional and incapable of acting on major policy.” The National Journal reports that as recently as 1999, more than half of...

Candidate for Senate Dan Liljenquist (left) pledged to The New American that should he be elected to the U.S. Senate he will offer legislation explicitly repealing the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In a press conference held on April 24 at 2:00 p.m. (MDT), the former Utah State Senator and current GOP challenger to six-term Senator Orrin Hatch described the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA as “an overreach and a violation of the Bill of Rights.” He said that had he been in office when Congress voted to pass the NDAA he would have...

After 6 terms in the United States senate, long time RINO Orrin Hatch will face his first primary battle after failing to attain the necessary 60% of delegate votes at Saturday’s Utah Republican convention. After falling 32 votes short of the required total on the final ballot, Hatch will take on conservative Republican Dan Liljenquist on June 26th. In 2010 Hatch watched nervously as Utah colleague Robert Bennett was removed from the Senate in his own primary contest, a victim of having too often sold-out the conservative Republican base. Concerned with mounting criticism of his own predilection for confirming Marxists...

After 6 terms in the United States senate, long time RINO Orrin Hatch will face his first primary battle after failing to attain the necessary 60% of delegate votes at Saturday’s Utah Republican convention. After falling 32 votes short of the required total on the final ballot, Hatch will take on conservative Republican Dan Liljenquist on June 26th. In 2010 Hatch watched nervously as Utah colleague Robert Bennett was removed from the Senate in his own primary contest, a victim of having too often sold-out the conservative Republican base. Concerned with mounting criticism of his own predilection for confirming Marxists...

The Tea Party movement is alive in Utah. With representatives from FreedomWorks in the audience, delegates at the Utah Republican Convention managed to force Sen. Orrin Hatch into a June 26 primary. He got 59.2 percent of their votes against Dan Liljenquist, a 38-year-old state senator. Hatch needed 60 percent to avoid the primary. He couldn’t do it. In two rounds of voting, he went from 2,243 votes to 2,313 votes. If he’d gotten 32 more votes, he would have wrapped this up… FreedomWorks and other Tea Party groups now have two Causes to distract them from their failure to...

FARMINGTON, Utah -- Sen. Orrin Hatch predicted President Obama's campaign team would use Mitt Romney's Mormon faith against him in the general election. Speaking to a group of GOP delegates at a campaign stop Tuesday, the six-term Republican incumbent warned, "You watch, they're going to throw the Mormon church at him like you can't believe." Asked to elaborate in an interview later, Hatch fingered campaign adviser David Axelrod and White House aide David Plouffe as the masterminds who would insert the issue into the campaign. "Let me tell you something. The Obama people have some of the best political consultants...

The United States is now, officially, the worst place to do business in the developed world. On Sunday, Japan lowered its corporate tax rate in the hopes of luring business to its shores, handing the title of highest tax rate to the Land of the Free. The market reaction on Monday will tell whether money will begin flowing away from us and toward the more business-friendly Asian country. Japan’s combined corporate tax rate went down from 39.8 percent to 36.8 percent on its way to 34.5 percent within a few years. The U.S. federal rate is 35 percent and the...

Today may be the most important day of Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R) bid for a seventh term. The Hatch campaign, fending off state GOP convention challenges from conservative opponents, has recruited and trained thousands of people to run as delegates for Hatch in tonight’s local caucuses being held around the state. The 4,000 delegates elected will go on to vote at the April 21 convention, where a nominee can emerge with 60 percent of the vote. If no one cracks that mark, the top two finishers go on to a June 26 primary. “The campaign has been working toward caucus...