Hagerty to Yellen: Zero accountability for politicized leak of confidential taxpayer information underscores why Americans fear a massive increase in IRS budget

November 30, 2021

Says, ‘This is the D.C. swamp at its best’

WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, today questioned U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Democrats’ planned massive increase in IRS enforcement funding to collect hundreds of billions more from working Americans as a way to pay for their big-government-socialism programs in the so-called Build Back Better package. Hagerty indicated to Yellen that empowering this increased IRS snooping over Americans’ finances is particularly concerning given the total lack of accountability for the recent leak of confidential taxpayer information to ProPublica.

Yellen previously testified to Hagerty in September that the ProPublica leak was illegal, was being investigated, and that it would not be tolerated. But when asked for an update today, she could only allude to a vaguely described investigation by some nameless government agencies and confirmed that no person has been held accountable.

“I take that as no update, but after the Lois Lerner scandal, after the scandal that occurred here in 2021 under this Administration’s watch, I appreciate the fact that there’s an investigation underway, but I would say this: until we have the results of that investigation, until we have true accountability, I cannot imagine how the Biden Administration is encouraging what is in effect a 10-times increase in the audit capacity of the IRS when there is no accountability there. This is the D.C. swamp at its best,” Senator Hagerty said.

The U.S. House-passed version of President Joe Biden’s so-called Build Back Better package includes $45 billion for additional IRS enforcement against Americans to collect hundreds of billions in additional dollars to fund government programs.

“I would just encourage good management here so that we make sure that those resources are focused at the direction they should be rather than attacking conservative groups and ordinary Americans and leaking that information to the public,” Senator Hagerty concluded.

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