Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam is featured in a National Review story today about the IRS scandal and his determination to get to the bottom of the agency's problematic activities. Monday, IRS acting chief Danny Werfel issued findings on the agency that aggravated Roskam, who is now fourth in the US House GOP's leadership.
Werfel’s 83-page report, released on Monday, concluded, based on the IRS’s internal investigation of the matter, that the targeting of tea-party groups resulted from “significant management and judgment failures” but that “we have not found evidence of intentional wrongdoing by IRS personnel.” Werfel also indicated that he is relying on Congress and the inspector general’s office to conduct interviews with his employees and to get to the bottom of the problem.
Roskam has little patience for what he considers the report’s vagueness and sidestepping. The report, he says, articulates the problem at the heart of the IRS: government gone wild. The agency is “incapable of getting to the bottom of a discipline problem, a wasting of taxpayer funds problem, a lying to Congress and the American people problem.” In short, “an agency that is out of control.”
The GOP’s chief deputy whip is determined to put the agency back in what he considers to be its rightful place in both Washington and American life, and he is introducing legislation that he believes will do so. In addition to grilling Werfel on Thursday, Roskam will also introduce a package of four bills that together he is calling the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. It is intended to address the slew of scandals roiling the IRS, from the targeting of conservative groups to the lavish spending on employee conferences. The four laws would, among other things, require the IRS to notify taxpayers every time their information is shared, prohibit the agency from asking citizens questions about their political, religious, or social beliefs, and forbid the IRS from holding conferences until it implements the corrective measures made by the inspector general in mid-May.
More HERE.
In the GOP-controlled House, the Ways and Means Committee and the Oversight Committee are working together to investigate the IRS. The Ways and Means Committee plays a particularly important role in the investigation because its chairman, Michigan congressman Dave Camp, has the authority to request access to private taxpayer information. (In Congress, that power is shared only by Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.) In the investigation of this scandal, seeing how the IRS processed taxpayer files may prove vital. “It removes a shield that the IRS might be tempted to use,” Roskam explains.
