NPR: an arm of the Democrat Party establishment

PROPAGANDA: NPR INCORRECTLY CLAIMS IRS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OBAMACARE

During the May 22 broadcast of National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," host Neil Conan repeatedly contradicted a guest by claiming that the IRS has nothing at all to do with Obamacare. 

NPR's Conan is, of course, completely incorrect. The IRS is up to its Tea Party harassing neck in Obamacare.

The guest Conan contradicted was Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist and pollster. Conway was on to discuss the various scandals in which Obama is mired and close to the end of her segment she questioned how the American people can trust the IRS to implement Obamacare.

Conan initially pressed her on the claim saying that she must have "misspoken."

"And I think you may have misspoken earlier, Kellyanne Conway, about the IRS and its role in health care," the host claimed. "It is responsible for collecting the fine if somebody does not get healthcare, it's not responsible whether somebody gets healthcare or not."

Conway went on properly to note that the IRS does, indeed, have a large hand on the tiller of Obamacare.

The Republican pollster noted that the American people are quite in the dark about how far reaching this Obamacare law is. They are in the dark about how it is supposed to work. "When [the American people] think of implementing Obamacare...they aren't thinking of the IRS," she said.

Conway also reminded host Conan why Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court last year. It wasn't upheld under the Commerce Clause but under the federal government's taxing powers. 

"So, the same IRS that is playing politics with people's lives and their applications will also have some kind of authority over what happens with healthcare," she said. 

As they came upon a break, Conan's reply was a succinct--and wholly wrong--"No, it won't." 

Of course, the truth is that the IRS does have a large role in implementing Obamacare. Conan's guest, Kellyanne Conway, even cited the Washington Post report that noted that the IRS has already created a large bureaucratic flowchart to implement Obamacare.

Even citing the left-leaning Post, though, wasn't enough to convince the ill-informed NPR host.

But he is wrong. the IRS does have a large role in Obamacare. As the Heritage Foundation reports, "The GAO wrote that the IRS 'has responsibilities in the implementation of 47' provisions, while the Treasury inspector general concluded that 'at least 42 provisions [of Obamacare] add to or amend the Internal Revenue Code.'"

That is hardly the "no, it won't" that NPR host Neil Conan insisted, is it?

Giant octopus: IRS has 8 offices to enforce Obamacare

The Internal Revenue Service, charged with implementing the biggest change in tax laws in 20 years due to Obamacare, has created eight offices and special "teams" to handle the chore, way more than initially revealed.

Besides the top office headed by the woman in the middle of the IRS-Tea Party scandal, there are seven others and a special enforcement team that make up an organization chart that mirrors the organization of the IRS itself, according to a Treasury Inspector General's report.

The June report focused on concerns that the IRS, which is filling the Obamacare offices with 2,137 agents and officials to make sure citizens and companies comply with the new health law or pay a fine, isn't clear on its new role and how many new workers it will actually need. For example, the IRS will be in charge of analyzing hospital "community benefit activities," which it has never done before.

But in that report was the organizational chart revealing the series of Obamacare offices. They are led by a steering committee that coordinates Obamacare implementation across the IRS. It is led by the agency's deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, the office linked to the IRS scandal. Ousted acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller recently had that job.

Other branches include three program management offices, four services and enforcement offices, and services and enforcement exchange working teams.

From the IG report:

Appropriate Plans Have Been Developed to Implement Most Tax-Related Provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

To begin the major task of implementing the tax-related provisions of the ACA, the IRS created the following Executive Steering Committees, Offices, and Teams.

-- The ACA Executive Steering Committee (ESC) is responsible for overall program coordination and implementation of the ACA across the IRS. This committee is co-chaired by the Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement and the Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support. It also includes the IRS Chief of Staff and other IRS executives, including the business operating division commissioners, et al.

-- Three program management offices (PMO): 1) Services and Enforcement; 2) Modernization and Information Technology Services (MITS);5 and 3) Health Care Council. These PMOs are accountable to the ESC for ACA implementation and work with the IRS business operating divisions to ensure efforts are successfully coordinated.

-- Four functional ESCs, each led by an executive chair, have responsibility for specific provisions in the ACA that directly affect the four business operating divisions (Wage and Investment, Small Business/Self-Employed, Large Business and International, and Tax Exempt/Government Entities).

-- The Services and Enforcement Exchange Working Teams are responsible for planning the implementation of the exchange provisions scheduled for 2014.