Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the resignation of acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller a sign President Obama is “beginning to take action” on the IRS scandal.
Miller, a career tax man filling in the role in the absence of an Obama appointment, was not in charge of the agency at the time of the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. That was Doug Shulman, who stepped down three days after Obama won re-election.
Obama said this evening in the East Room that he’d spoken with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew “to discuss the investigation into IRS personnel who improperly screened conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.”
“And I look forward to taking some questions at tomorrow’s press conference, but today, I wanted to make sure to get out to all of you some information about what we’re doing about this, and where we go from here,” the president said. “I’ve reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog’s report, and the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable. It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it.”
The inspector general’s report was released last night. It was preceded by an apology from the IRS for targeting groups like the Tea Party.
Obama said Miller’s resignation was accepted “because given the controversy surrounding this audit, it’s important to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward.”
“Second, we’re going to put in place new safeguards to make sure this kind of behavior cannot happen again,” Obama said. “…Third, we will work with Congress as it performs its oversight role.”
“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards, and going forward, by making sure that the law is applied as it should be — in a fair and impartial way,” he continued. “And we’re going to have to make sure that the laws are clear so that we can have confidence that they are enforced in a fair and impartial way, and that there’s not too much ambiguity surrounding these laws.”
“More than two years after the problem began, and a year after the IRS told us there was no problem, the President is beginning to take action. If the President is as concerned about this issue as he claims, he’ll work openly and transparently with Congress to get to the bottom of the scandal—no stonewalling, no half-answers, no withholding of witnesses,” McConnell said.
“These allegations are serious — that there was an effort to bring the power of the federal government to bear on those the administration disagreed with, in the middle of a heated national election.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said the resignation was a “first step,” but “it remains clear that the President has not fully grasped the wide-ranging effects of the IRS scandal as it took nearly a week for him to act.”
“This is not something that can be swept under the rug – we need permanent, systematic fixes to ensure that it does not happen again,” Scott continued. “The American people deserve better than what they have seen from the White House over the past week, and the President has a responsibility to cooperate with Congressional investigations as we work to get to the bottom of this.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of the lawmakers to introduce legislation in response to the scandal, called Miller’s resignation “only the first step in preventing these dangerous practices by the IRS and making sure that no government entity engages in this kind of partisan targeting,”
“The Administration and Congress must cut this practice off at its roots by preventing this discriminatory practice from ever occurring going forward.”
Miller is still on the witness list to testify at a Friday House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the scandal.
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