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John Barrasso Accuses Biden Of 'Weaponizing' IRS, Asks Nominee How To Restore Agency's 'Credibility'
Forbes Breaking News
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6/2/2025
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing last week, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the IRS.
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00:00
Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much Mr. Chairman and congratulations on this
00:04
nomination. I'm talking about weaponizing the IRS. I think we saw that the last four
00:08
years by the Biden administration and best different groups and church groups
00:12
parents all sorts of things the IRS was weaponized and I'm just going to ask you
00:16
about restoring the credibility of the IRS which I thought lost a lot of
00:19
credibility during the last four years under Joe Biden and the Democrat
00:22
control. So I think very few agencies in Washington are as present in the lives
00:27
of working families as the IRS is. When you came to visit with me I told you
00:32
my concerns and the concerns of the people of Wyoming that the IRS is the
00:35
most powerful but yet what we've seen in the past the least accountable of the
00:40
agencies of the government. So under the Biden administration the presence really
00:44
shifted from helping people understand our taxes to presuming everybody was
00:48
breaking the law that we were all a bunch of crooks. They wanted to add what was
00:51
there 87,000 IRS agents to shake down small businesses because they even the
00:55
Congressional Budget Office said yeah if you had all these more IRS agents then
00:59
they're going to bring in that much more money because they're going to be out
01:01
there auditing small businesses and going after families and you know in
01:05
Wyoming I regularly hear from folks they're just concerned about any
01:08
dealings they have with the IRS and if they don't hear from them that's better
01:11
because these are honest taxpayers they want to pay what they owe they want to
01:15
make sure that when they have a question they can get an answer and I think too
01:20
often if they call the IRS repeatedly they're unable to get anybody to answer the phone
01:23
or helping them comply or saying yeah this is a number you can rely on and you
01:28
pay this and it's fair so you know the IRS's audit notices don't seem to be
01:35
delayed but their answers seem to be delayed but you know this hiring of
01:40
thousands of new agents to investigate taxpayers really I think set the IRS even
01:45
further away from the American people in terms of an agency that they trust so you
01:49
know if confirmed you could just talk a little bit about how you hope to restore
01:52
the credibility of the IRS with the American people I and thank you for the
01:57
question thank you for the time in your office you know that my wife and her
02:00
family have deep ties that's where she was raised out there in Wyoming and but I
02:07
think that I'm my three most important things the IRS for fairness fairness and
02:13
fairness I think you have to be fairness to fair to the taxpayers but you also
02:16
have to have your employee partners that are gonna work with them and not be
02:21
intimidated by one or the other and when you talk about calling the IRS and
02:25
getting information I mentioned earlier when I did talk radio for six years there
02:30
wasn't a week that went by that I didn't say you could call the IRS five days a
02:33
week with the same question to get six different answers and unfortunately that
02:38
happens still today I've I don't know how to prepare for something like this I
02:43
mean my thought was go back and watch old commissioner hearings Senate you know for
02:48
Senate approval of people that were nominated to be commissioner of the IRS
02:52
because I thought that it was important to kind of in it's the same thing over and
02:57
over and over for all these years whether it's technology whether it's
03:01
taxpayer fairness overhanded heavy-handed investigations of people and let's bring
03:08
back common sense as I told I think it was a senator young a while ago that let's
03:15
bring back common sense to the IRS and stay in constant communication with the
03:20
senators offices with Congress's office and when I just left Congress two and a
03:25
half years ago I want people in my office to be able to set in with you all
03:30
when you're developing these laws so once it's done you don't have to spend six
03:34
or ten twelve months deciding what it meant because that's what a lot of these
03:38
problems are today that we've been discussing or something goes over to the IRS and it
03:42
takes them forever to put out guidance on it and it's kind of like the king's
03:46
horsemen roll into town and they jump off the horse and they roll out the scroll
03:49
and this is this week's edicts and they roll it back up and go out of town come
03:53
back three weeks later and roll out another scroll with this week's edict that
03:57
they're deciding over there so I think communication is number one and I've
04:01
always been a pretty good communicator and I want to have a very open-door
04:06
policy and I we were talking about Charles Rossetti earlier and he said the
04:11
first thing he did at the IRS he went down there and all the doors were solid
04:15
you can see but in their office he said go get me a stopper rubber stopper and he
04:21
propped his door open from that day on so that people could have accessibility to
04:25
him and get in I'm going to improve on Charles the system I'm going to have
04:29
anybody that wants to know my schedule every morning for 90 minutes before the
04:32
place opens to hear their concerns to hear how we can treat taxpayers better not
04:36
be heavy-handed we got to collect what do we collect 96% of the income in this
04:41
country through the IRS so it's a pretty important agency and I know that you
04:46
know the position I am it's you know not what everybody aspires to be but through
04:53
my years on the radio and everything all the issues that I knew people had with
04:57
the IRS and when I was at Congress for 12 years that was a large part of our
05:01
constituent services let me have one last question and it's on protecting
05:04
taxpayer data and people are very concerned about their own private
05:08
information last answer you said you'd worked on the word intimidation people
05:12
feel intimidated and especially their worry is that their data may get out
05:15
their information that they don't want shared with anybody and it's because of
05:18
some hacking or something has in the IRS could you talk a little bit about that
05:21
yeah I think that you know it's vitally important 6103 is the longest section in
05:26
the IRS code and I think we have to bend over backwards do everything we can
05:30
possibly do to protect that data thank you thank you mr. chairman
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