WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama yesterday called the targeting of conservative groups by U.S. tax officials “outrageous” and said that any Internal Revenue Service employees involved would be held accountable.
Obama’s comments, during a news conference with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron, marked the first time the president had spoken publicly about the IRS scandal.
The scandal was ignited last Friday, when an IRS official revealed at a meeting of tax lawyers that the agency had inappropriately singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny of their claims for tax-exempt status.
As lawmakers in both parties expressed outrage on Capitol Hill yesterday, Obama – who said he first learned about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups on Friday – said that he had “no patience” for such actions by the tax agency.
“The IRS as an independent agency requires absolute integrity, and people have to have confidence that they’re applying … the laws in a nonpartisan way,” Obama said.
While making clear that he considers the IRS scandal a serious concern, Obama took a dimmer view of another issue dominating his administration’s time: the ongoing probe by congressional Republicans into the deadly attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, last September.
That, Obama said, has been a political “sideshow.”
