Congressman Steve Russell this week helped push four bills which add oversight to the Internal Revenue Service.
H.R. 1206, No Hires for the Delinquent IRS Act, restricts the IRS from keeping employees with outstanding, major tax debt.
The IRS Oversight While Eliminating Spending Act compels the IRS to use collected user fees for user customer service, unless Congress gives the approval to spend the money elsewhere.
H.R. 4890 is known as the IRS Bonuses Tied to Measurable Metrics Act. It bans the payment of bonuses to IRS employees until the Treasury Secretary puts a comprehensive customer service strategy in place.
Ensuring Integrity in the IRS Workforce Act, H.R. 3724, stops the IRS from hiring former employees who were fired for cause.
“It is quite unfortunate that these bills are necessary, as they seem so simple that they should have been obvious before today. It is also unfortunate that the IRS repeatedly shows bad judgement, whether it stems from targeting conservatives, failure to comply with Congressional subpoenas, or bungling the retrieval of data on its servers. The Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee has also shown that the IRS Commissioner John Koskinen bore false witness before the Committee, specifically shown when I questioned the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s (TIGTA) investigation into the IRS targeting of conservatives. When asked explicitly about the Commissioner’s testimony on several occasions, TIGTA replied the Commissioner’s answers ‘would appear not to be true,’” said Russell.
