Members of the Senate Finance Committee blasted the head of the Internal Revenue Service Tuesday for problems still lingering within the agency more than two years after the targeting controversy came to light.
Commissioner John Koskinen denied suggestions that the IRS had ever scrutinized conservative groups for political reasons, citing the Justice Department’s decision last week to close its investigation without pressing criminal charges.
The heated hearing highlighted the divide that still exists between Republicans and Democrats over whether the IRS ever actually targeted conservatives in the run-up to President Obama’s 2012 re-election.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Finance Committee, praised the bipartisan report his panel released in August for putting forward suggestions on how to improve the tax agency.
That report uncovered “gross mismanagement of the highest levels” within the IRS. It also found the tax agency failed to process a single Tea Party application in 2011.
“As we all know, last week, the Department of Justice stated publicly that they would not be pressing criminal charges with regard to these events at the IRS,” Hatch said in his prepared opening statement. “This has led some to argue that the Justice Department is corrupt or biased in some way. Others have said that this decision proves that nothing scandalous occurred at the IRS.”
Hatch said he believes the committee’s report “speaks for itself.”
“And, in my opinion, rather than fueling the echo chamber, we would do better to focus on what we know actually happened and what changes need to take place to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he added.
Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee first called for the removal of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in July.
Lawmakers argued Koskinen had destroyed evidence while under subpoena and hid from investigators a hard-drive crash that had wiped away thousands of requested emails.
The deputy inspector general testified in June that IRS employees “magnetically erased” 422 backup tapes that contained emails sought by investigators.
Koskinen said Tuesday his employees never knowingly discarded evidence during the investigation.
“No one purposefully destroyed those tapes,” Koskinen said.
Sen. Tim Scott expressed concern that a “culture” of intimidation within the IRS has not changed under Koskinen’s leadership.
“[The IRS] used that power of intimidation against conservative organizations, and then there was a cover-up of that intimidation,” Scott said. “That’s why we’re having this hearing today.”
Scott noted Koskinen had been “brought in as a turn-around man” at the height of the IRS controversy in an effort to repair the damage that had been done to the tax agency.
The South Carolina Republican pressed Koskinen on “who has been fired” from the IRS given multiple reports that found problems within the agency.
“There’s no evidence that supports that there was any culture of discrimination,” Koskinen argued.
“We need to deal with the problem, but we need to characterize it appropriately,” he added.
Sen. John Thune said “the culture at the IRS allowed employees to believe that they could allow their political beliefs to guide how they treated taxpayers,” noting that the public had lost trust in the tax agency.
The South Dakota Republican ticked through a list of proposed IRS reforms, including mandatory termination for employees who threatened an audit based on personal reasons and a law barring employees from using personal email accounts for official business.
Koskinen said many of those reforms are already in the works.
But the IRS chief disputed suggestions that the tax agency ever targeted conservatives for scrutiny or audits.
“The independent investigations that have looked at that have not found a single instance of that,” he said. “While people may feel they were targeted, there’s been no objective review that’s found that was true.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee’s top Democrat, said the inspector general review and committee investigators did not uncover any politically-motivated targeting.
“There is no evidence of political bias,” Wyden said.
“We all know there was political bias,” Hatch shot back.
The hearing Tuesday failed to resolve disagreements over whether the IRS ever targeted conservatives.
