A champion of campaign finance de-regulation, Senator Mitch McConnell has set his sights on discrediting one facet of the reform program—disclosure—that the Republican Party long proclaimed it could live with. He suggests a change of heart brought about by the misdeeds of political adversaries, but others have noted how the Republican turn-about on disclosure coincided with the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. So it is worth considering again whether the case the Senator is making is an example of anti-reform politics, significant more as a tactical exercise than a serious statement of constitutional principle or public policy.

One theme in the narrative about the IRS is that it faces a special challenge in enforcing the (c)(4) rules in the wake of Citizens United. A (c)(4) organization, which is typically a corporation, can make independent expenditures, so long as this campaign activity and others do not make up its primary purpose.

Two basic reform models have been advanced to protect against the misuse of these nonprofits to make these and other campaign-related expenditures. One is that the Service should generally employ more rigor in rooting out organizations that have exceeded their limit for political activity. Another is that the IRS should change its rules, switching the test from a "primary” social welfare purpose to an "exclusive one" without any campaign activity mixed in, and rid itself of the problem altogether: effectively, the no-tolerance option.

In both cases, however, the proposed solutions may have to scale steep walls erected by Supreme Court precedent. These issues have to be taken into account in judging the role that IRS enforcement can play in campaign finance regulation.

Discussion of the IRS’ mishandling of the tax exempt applications process might include a fundamental question: what role do we want to assign the IRS in approving tax-exemptions for groups engaged in one form or another of political, legislative or policy activity? And to keep the discussion still simpler, stripped of an additional complicating factor, the focus might be mostly on 501(c)(4) “social welfare organizations,” which, unlike their (c)(3) kin, do not offer donors a tax deduction and raise the additional issue of tax subsidies.