A tear runs down the face of US President Barack Obama as he talks about the attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, during a joint news conference with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron in the East Room of the White House in Washington, yesterday.
WASHINGTON: Seeking to quell a growing scandal, President Barack Obama said yesterday it would be “outrageous” if US tax authorities targeted conservative groups fiercely opposed to his White House.
As he battled growing political woes, Obama also denied his White House had engaged in a cover-up to downplay the impact to his re-election campaign of the attack on the US mission in Benghazi last year, which killed four Americans.
Obama sought to defuse Republican fury and political damage to his administration over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service had subjected conservative grassroots groups to extra scrutiny.
“If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous. And there’s no place for it,” Obama said at a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
“They have to be held fully accountable because the IRS, as an independent agency, requires absolute integrity and people have to have confidence that they’re applying it in a nonpartisan way.”
Republicans, spotting a new political opportunity to damage Obama’s political standing, have seized on reports that emerged last week over the IRS’s efforts to assess tax-exempt status of conservative groups.
Republican Senator Susan Collins told CNN on Sunday that the reports were “absolutely chilling.” The IRS cloud was the latest political drama to hit the Obama administration as the president struggles to enact his second term agenda in a polarised Congress just four months after his inauguration.
Obama has also been hit by claims that his administration tried to downplay the political impact of the Benghazi raid, and changed talking points given to top US officials to cast doubt on whether the attack was terrorism. The president said that the campaign by Republicans and conservative media, which hit new heights with House of Representatives hearings on the issue last week, was politically motivated.
“The whole issue of talking points frankly throughout this process has been a sideshow,” Obama said.
The White House had previously claimed that the talking points on the affair given to UN ambassador Susan Rice before she went on talk shows in September were only changed for stylistic reasons.
Republicans charged that her statement that the attack appeared to be spontaneous and a reaction to an anti-Muslim YouTube video produced in the United States was proof the administration acted
mendaciously. AFP
