WASHINGTON — The new IRS commissioner yesterday pledged to lawmakers that he will clean house and find out why the agency targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups.
“It’s completely inexcusable,” Danny Werfel told a House appropriations subcommittee.
“This important agency is founded on the principle of operating impartially, and we failed in that most basic core principle.”
Subcommittee members threatened to cut the IRS’ $12.9 billion budget if corrections aren’t made.
“We cannot, in good conscience, continue to provide hard-earned taxpayer dollars to the IRS and have [it] use those funds to abuse the rights of American citizens,” said Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), the subcommittee chair.
Republicans on the panel peppered Werfel with questions over what they called wasteful spending, such as $49 million for 220 employee conferences in the last three years and $92 million in employee bonuses since 2009. They also blasted the IRS’ overpayment of $13 billion in earned income-tax benefits.
“It seems we have a new misstep every day at the IRS,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.). “I’m very troubled as to what might come to light next.”
J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, told the panel that his audit, which exposed the scandal, found no link to the White House.
But he added that IRS employees involved in the scrutiny did not acknowledge the source of the practice.
“We have to get to the bottom of it,” said Werfel, who’s been on the job all of 12 days.
“We will uncover every fact . . . I’m like everybody else. I’m frustrated, too.”