The IRS, always friend­less, now is a pari­ah. Repub­li­cans can’t stop con­demn­ing it. Democ­rats can’t stop agree­ing.

Corporations can’t 'suffer' illness. They can, however, kill democracy.

Tar­get­ing Tea Par­ty groups for scruti­ny, even if through incom­pe­tence, not inten­tion, turned the IRS into a nasty car­bun­cle on the gov­ern­ing body.

Car­bun­cles are nev­er good. Strength-sap­ping, painful, ugly, they’re to be avoid­ed. Here’s the thing, though: while every politi­cian in Wash­ing­ton is curs­ing the car­bun­cle, hard­ly one has com­plained of the can­cer killing the patient. Allow­ing unlim­it­ed, unac­count­ed-for cor­po­rate spend­ing in elec­tions is a malig­nan­cy threat­en­ing the life of the repub­lic. Per­mit­ting Tea Par­ty, left-wing, lib­er­tar­i­an, mid­dle-of-the-road—what­ev­er—groups to define them­selves as untaxed social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions that may accept unlim­it­ed, untaxed, secret cor­po­rate gifts and spon­sor polit­i­cal ads is a sar­co­ma on democracy.

Nobody wants the IRS sin­gling out appli­cants based on pol­i­tics. The Amer­i­can peo­ple do, how­ev­er, want some­one, if not the IRS, some­one else, some­where to do some­thing about the per­ver­sion of elec­tion finance. The IRS is hard­ly a good can­di­date for that job. The Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion (SEC) could help. A con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment would be better.

The IRS has some reg­u­la­to­ry pow­er. In the Tea Par­ty case, the IRS was exam­in­ing appli­ca­tions for ​“social wel­fare” or 501(c)(4) sta­tus, which is com­mon­ly used to cir­cum­vent cam­paign finance laws.

The tax code defines 501(c)(4) groups like this: ​“Civic leagues or orga­ni­za­tions not orga­nized for prof­it but oper­at­ed exclu­sive­ly for the pro­mo­tion of social wel­fare.” These are dif­fer­ent from char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tions, called 501(c)(3), such as food banks and home­less shel­ters. And they are dif­fer­ent from polit­i­cal out­fits, which have their very own place—Sec­tion 527—in the tax code.

Over the past decade, an increas­ing num­ber of polit­i­cal groups sought ​“social wel­fare” sta­tus instead. That’s because of a 2001 law requir­ing polit­i­cal out­fits to dis­close their donors. ​“Social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tions don’t have to do that. Politi­cized ​“social wel­fare” groups sprout­ed even faster after the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed in the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed case in 2010 that cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple free to spend unlim­it­ed cash in elections.

​“Social wel­fare” groups pro­vid­ed cor­po­ra­tions with the abil­i­ty to spend untold mil­lions on can­di­dates while keep­ing that a secret from cus­tomers and shareholders.

But here’s the prob­lem: The tax code requires these groups to work ​“exclu­sive­ly” to pro­mote social wel­fare. Reg­u­la­tions per­mit some polit­i­cal activ­i­ty but for­bid these groups from func­tion­ing pri­mar­i­ly for politics.

Despite that, many of these groups, from the right-wing Cross­roads GPS to the lefty Pri­or­i­ties USA, clear­ly oper­ate pri­mar­i­ly for pol­i­tics. They spent hun­dreds of mil­lions in the last Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Watch­dog groups have filed a dozen com­plaints in the past two years object­ing to this appar­ent vio­la­tion. The IRS nev­er responded.

Not much enforce­ment there.

The IRS made a lit­tle effort in 2011, but backed off when GOP lead­ers complained.

Gifts to char­i­ties are tax exempt, but those to ​“social wel­fare” groups are not. Well, they’re not sup­posed to be. The IRS sent let­ters to a group of big donors two years ago inform­ing them that gifts to ​“social wel­fare” groups may be sub­ject to tax. Imme­di­ate­ly, Repub­li­can sen­a­tors Orrin G. Hatch and Jon Kyl accused the IRS of par­ti­san­ship. After which the IRS ​“fold­ed like wet card­board,” said Sheila Krumholz and Robert Wein­berg­er of the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics in a New York Times arti­cle.

No enforce­ment there.

Anoth­er gov­ern­ment enti­ty that could help cure the dark mon­ey dis­ease is the SEC.

No enforce­ment there either, though.

Lan­guish­ing at the SEC is a pro­pos­al to require pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­nies to dis­close the mon­ey they pour into these ​“social wel­fare” groups—funds described as ​“dark mon­ey” because the source is con­cealed. The idea is that share­hold­ers have a right to know how their invest­ment is used. And it’s a pop­u­lar con­cept, with more com­ments filed on this pro­pos­al than on any oth­er sug­gest­ed rule in SEC his­to­ry—half a mil­lion—the vast major­i­ty in favor.

Cit­ing the IRS scan­dal, Repub­li­cans demand­ed last week that the SEC kill the pro­pos­al to require cor­po­ra­tions to unveil their attempts to influ­ence elec­tions. New SEC Chair Mary Jo White refused.

Good sign. But still no actu­al enforcement.

One method of enforce­ment is on the move. It is a pro­posed amend­ment to the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion that would reverse the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion that cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple with First Amend­ment rights to free speech, which includes spend­ing unlim­it­ed mon­ey on pol­i­tics. Already, 13 states and more than 300 munic­i­pal­i­ties have called for approval of the Democ­ra­cy is For Peo­ple Amend­ment. It was intro­duced in Con­gress by Inde­pen­dent Ver­mont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Flori­da Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Ted Deutch.

It says nat­ur­al per­sons who are cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States may make cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions. Cor­po­ra­tions do not fit that def­i­n­i­tion of human beings, and as a result would be pro­hib­it­ed from mak­ing polit­i­cal gifts.

It would allow con­tri­bu­tions from Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tees, which are com­prised of human beings who get togeth­er and donate under the IRS’ polit­i­cal com­mit­tee rules—sec­tion 527. So groups of union mem­bers or wealthy CEOs could con­tin­ue donating.

Move to Amend activists were heart­ened by a Penn­syl­va­nia judge’s recent deci­sion that cor­po­ra­tions are not peo­ple and thus do not have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pri­va­cy. Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty Pres­i­dent Judge Deb­bie O’Dell-Seneca is no Supreme Court jus­tice. But she under­stands that there’s an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion in the fact that peo­ple can be heart­ened while cor­po­ra­tions can’t be. Her deci­sion includ­ed this analysis:

It is axiomat­ic that cor­po­ra­tions, com­pa­nies and part­ner­ship have no ​“spir­i­tu­al nature,” ​“feel­ings,” ​“intel­lect,” ​“beliefs,” ​“thoughts,” ​“emo­tions,” or ​“sen­sa­tions,” because they do not exist in the man­ner that humankind exists…They can­not be ​‘let alone’ by gov­ern­ment, because busi­ness­es are but grapes, ripe upon the vine of the law, that the peo­ple of this Com­mon­wealth raise, tend, and prune at their plea­sure and need.

Cor­po­ra­tions can’t ​“suf­fer” ill­ness. They can, how­ev­er, kill democracy.

To stop tox­ic cor­po­rate inter­fer­ence in elec­tions, the Amer­i­can peo­ple could demand that the IRS, which is sup­posed to be non-par­ti­san, decide exact­ly what con­sti­tutes polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. They could hope the SEC will do the right thing. What they should do, how­ev­er, is pass a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment clar­i­fy­ing once and for all that cor­po­ra­tions are not human and can’t usurp the rights of human beings.