John Barrasso Accuses Biden Of 'Weaponizing' IRS, Asks Nominee How To Restore Agency's 'Credibility'

Forbes Breaking News

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing last week, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the IRS.

Transcript

00:00Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much Mr. Chairman and congratulations on this

00:04nomination. I'm talking about weaponizing the IRS. I think we saw that the last four

00:08years by the Biden administration and best different groups and church groups

00:12parents all sorts of things the IRS was weaponized and I'm just going to ask you

00:16about restoring the credibility of the IRS which I thought lost a lot of

00:19credibility during the last four years under Joe Biden and the Democrat

00:22control. So I think very few agencies in Washington are as present in the lives

00:27of working families as the IRS is. When you came to visit with me I told you

00:32my concerns and the concerns of the people of Wyoming that the IRS is the

00:35most powerful but yet what we've seen in the past the least accountable of the

00:40agencies of the government. So under the Biden administration the presence really

00:44shifted from helping people understand our taxes to presuming everybody was

00:48breaking the law that we were all a bunch of crooks. They wanted to add what was

00:51there 87,000 IRS agents to shake down small businesses because they even the

00:55Congressional Budget Office said yeah if you had all these more IRS agents then

00:59they're going to bring in that much more money because they're going to be out

01:01there auditing small businesses and going after families and you know in

01:05Wyoming I regularly hear from folks they're just concerned about any

01:08dealings they have with the IRS and if they don't hear from them that's better

01:11because these are honest taxpayers they want to pay what they owe they want to

01:15make sure that when they have a question they can get an answer and I think too

01:20often if they call the IRS repeatedly they're unable to get anybody to answer the phone

01:23or helping them comply or saying yeah this is a number you can rely on and you

01:28pay this and it's fair so you know the IRS's audit notices don't seem to be

01:35delayed but their answers seem to be delayed but you know this hiring of

01:40thousands of new agents to investigate taxpayers really I think set the IRS even

01:45further away from the American people in terms of an agency that they trust so you

01:49know if confirmed you could just talk a little bit about how you hope to restore

01:52the credibility of the IRS with the American people I and thank you for the

01:57question thank you for the time in your office you know that my wife and her

02:00family have deep ties that's where she was raised out there in Wyoming and but I

02:07think that I'm my three most important things the IRS for fairness fairness and

02:13fairness I think you have to be fairness to fair to the taxpayers but you also

02:16have to have your employee partners that are gonna work with them and not be

02:21intimidated by one or the other and when you talk about calling the IRS and

02:25getting information I mentioned earlier when I did talk radio for six years there

02:30wasn't a week that went by that I didn't say you could call the IRS five days a

02:33week with the same question to get six different answers and unfortunately that

02:38happens still today I've I don't know how to prepare for something like this I

02:43mean my thought was go back and watch old commissioner hearings Senate you know for

02:48Senate approval of people that were nominated to be commissioner of the IRS

02:52because I thought that it was important to kind of in it's the same thing over and

02:57over and over for all these years whether it's technology whether it's

03:01taxpayer fairness overhanded heavy-handed investigations of people and let's bring

03:08back common sense as I told I think it was a senator young a while ago that let's

03:15bring back common sense to the IRS and stay in constant communication with the

03:20senators offices with Congress's office and when I just left Congress two and a

03:25half years ago I want people in my office to be able to set in with you all

03:30when you're developing these laws so once it's done you don't have to spend six

03:34or ten twelve months deciding what it meant because that's what a lot of these

03:38problems are today that we've been discussing or something goes over to the IRS and it

03:42takes them forever to put out guidance on it and it's kind of like the king's

03:46horsemen roll into town and they jump off the horse and they roll out the scroll

03:49and this is this week's edicts and they roll it back up and go out of town come

03:53back three weeks later and roll out another scroll with this week's edict that

03:57they're deciding over there so I think communication is number one and I've

04:01always been a pretty good communicator and I want to have a very open-door

04:06policy and I we were talking about Charles Rossetti earlier and he said the

04:11first thing he did at the IRS he went down there and all the doors were solid

04:15you can see but in their office he said go get me a stopper rubber stopper and he

04:21propped his door open from that day on so that people could have accessibility to

04:25him and get in I'm going to improve on Charles the system I'm going to have

04:29anybody that wants to know my schedule every morning for 90 minutes before the

04:32place opens to hear their concerns to hear how we can treat taxpayers better not

04:36be heavy-handed we got to collect what do we collect 96% of the income in this

04:41country through the IRS so it's a pretty important agency and I know that you

04:46know the position I am it's you know not what everybody aspires to be but through

04:53my years on the radio and everything all the issues that I knew people had with

04:57the IRS and when I was at Congress for 12 years that was a large part of our

05:01constituent services let me have one last question and it's on protecting

05:04taxpayer data and people are very concerned about their own private

05:08information last answer you said you'd worked on the word intimidation people

05:12feel intimidated and especially their worry is that their data may get out

05:15their information that they don't want shared with anybody and it's because of

05:18some hacking or something has in the IRS could you talk a little bit about that

05:21yeah I think that you know it's vitally important 6103 is the longest section in

05:26the IRS code and I think we have to bend over backwards do everything we can

05:30possibly do to protect that data thank you thank you mr. chairman

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