A Democratic Congressman
mocked the GOP’s effort to demonize an IRS official during a House Oversight
Committee hearing on Wednesday by asking her if she was a witch consorting with
the devil.
The official, Affordable
Care Act Office Director Sarah Hall Ingram, said in response to questioning
from Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA) that she has never worked with the devil,
could not fly, and was not responsible for perverting the youth “in Salem or
anywhere else.”
The unusual exchange came
during a hearing examining the IRS’s role in implementing and enforcing
Obamacare. Led by Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA), Republicans seized on a
partially redacted email between Hall Ingram and members of the Obama
administration that included mention of 6103, a rule that requires tax return
information to be kept confidential and prevents officials from disseminating
the information beyond a small group of IRS officials. In a lengthy exchange,
during which Hall Ingram denied sending tax return information to the White
House, Republicans demanded to know why parts of the email had been redacted
and accused the 31-year veteran of the agency of passing on illegal data to
assist the Obama administration in winning legal challenges against Obamacare.
Connolly then poked fun at the GOP with his questions. Watch it:
Hall Ingram added that the
6103 rule includes exemptions requiring the IRS “to share tax data in narrow
circumstances to forward some policy that Congress has in mind” and that
Obamacare allows officials to share tax data “for the purpose of the recipients
using it to determine eligibility for the benefits of the marketplaces and
Medicaid.”
The recipient, Hall Ingram
explained, are not political appointees, but rather “the individual
marketplaces and Medicaid offices who are using the data under the new part of
6103 to make income based determinations on eligibility.”
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