According to Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, one potential benefit of the Internal Revenue Service scandal is that it may increase the public’s support of the House’s efforts to repeal and replace President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.
“The reason I abhor big government is because it abuses its power every single time,” Labrador said Wednesday at May’s “Conversations with Conservatives” meeting, which he co-sponsors. “It doesn’t matter who’s running the government at the time.”
Labrador was referring to the fact that the IRS is one of the main agencies enforcing the implementation of Obamacare, which many see as a cause for concern in light of the scandal.
“We need to start having the discussion of whether it’s really such a good idea to have one-sixth of our economy actually controlled by the federal government,” Labrador said.
For Labrador, the IRS scandal serves as a real-world example of the effects of big government on our rights and liberties.
Congressman Steve Scalise (R-La.) agreed with Labrador on the link between the IRS and Obamacare.
“Whether you are conservative or not, you could be the next group that’s targeted,” Scalise said Wednesday.
He added the IRS was one of the main reasons that the House fought so hard to repeal Obamacare again last week, noting that Republicans in the chamber believe that it is important to keep the relationship between patients and their doctors without interference by bureaucrats and federal agencies.
Both Congressman also believe that it would be ‘frightening’ if the IRS was put in charge of the American healthcare system.
“They’ve don’t it with tax records, and now they will have the ability to do it with medical records and personal information,” Labrador said.
The federal government’s tax-collecting agency was forced to apologize earlier this month for improperly targeting conservative organizations, applying extra scrutiny to their tax filings and, sometimes, holding up their non-profit applications. In the past week several IRS senior administrators – including the current and former commissioners – have testified before Congressional committees acknowledging the agency’s wrongdoings.
