Bush had one White House visit by the IRS commissioner. Why did Obama have 157?

If you’re not already familiar with the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups under Obama, you can read all about it at entry #170 in this earlier post of mine: Here are 180 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, government waste, and other misdeeds

There are two new things in this next article, and I’m not sure which of the two is more interesting.

First, during Obama’s presidency, the IRS commissioner made more visits to the White House – by a very large margin – than any other cabinet member. This tells us a lot about what Obama thinks the most important government agency is.

The second thing is that Bush had less than 1% as many visits from the IRS commissioner as Obama did. This tells us a lot about one of the fundamental differences between the political philosophies of the two presidents.

None of this is proof that Obama knew about or ordered the IRS targeting of conservative groups. But it does raise a huge amount of suspicion.

The Daily Caller reports:

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.

By contrast, Shulman’s predecessor Mark Everson only visited the White House once during four years of service in the George W. Bush administration.

An analysis by The Daily Caller of the White House’s public “visitor access records” showed that every current and former member of President Obama’s Cabinet would have had to rack up at least 60 more public visits to the president’s home to catch up with “Douglas Shulman.”

The record depicts an IRS chief uniquely at home in the White House.

The sheer volume of Shulman’s White House visits has left congressional investigators puzzled.

“What would be some of the reasons you might be at the White House?” Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly asked Shulman during a congressional hearing last week.

“Um, the Easter Egg Roll with my kids,” Shulman replied.”

“Sooner or later this (question) will have to be answered,” tweeted Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, “What was the ex-IRS chief doing at the White House all those times?”

May 30, 2013. Tags: , , , . Barack Obama, Politics.

3 Comments

  1. drugsandotherthings replied:

    wow. you really need to do your fact checking. (As does the Daily Caller)

    The records DO NOT show that Schullman visited the white house “157 times”. Indeed- the records show he only visited a few times (11 to be exact). All during the “Affordable Care Act” negotiations. Indeed, the 157 number comes from being granted secret service clearance, not actual visits, to attend the 80 bi-weekly “health reform ministers meetings” and 40 clearances- not visits, to meet with the director of the office of health reform.

    ah…but the truth doesn’t make as a good a story now does it?

    • danfromsquirrelhill replied:

      The Daily Caller information is from the official White House visitors logs.

      • drugsandotherthings replied:

        Well duh.

        Have you bothered to look at them? OR have the vaguest understanding of what they mean?

        Those logs are not of actual visitors- but of those cleared by the secret service to visit.

        As stated, he was actually signed in/out – in other words a total of 11 times – all related to the affordable care act- and specifically meetings with health administration officials.

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