GOP prepares to block Lerner email proposals

The House Ways and Means Committee is set to take up two measures on Lois Lerner’s missing emails on Thursday — and, in a surprising twist, is expected to block them.

{mosads}Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) has introduced a series of resolutions calling on federal agencies to turn over any emails between their staffers and Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the current Tea Party controversy.

Ways and Means is scheduled to take up the measures calling on Treasury and the White House to hand over their Lerner emails.

But there are several catches. For starters, Stockman’s proposals have been deemed privileged resolutions — meaning that, unless Ways and Means acts, any lawmaker can bring them up for floor consideration.

As it happens, the White House and Treasury have already reported back to Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) about any Lerner emails they might have.

Plus, as Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) acknowledged, GOP leadership doesn’t want Stockman playing a more visible role in their IRS investigation.

Stockman, who challenged Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) in a primary this year, has also proposed forcing the National Security Agency to find any missing Lerner emails.

“We’re going to have those basically to block them from moving forward,” Boustany said Wednesday, who cast the matter as “a procedural issue.”

The IRS has said that Lerner’s computer crashed several years ago, leaving them unable to reproduce all of her emails from 2009 to the middle of 2011.

Republicans are angry about the missing emails, which have reignited the congressional investigations into the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups that began more than a year ago.