Iowa U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley met Monday with President Trump’s nominee for commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, who he says has “very aggressive plans” for overhauling the agency.
Grassley, a Republican who serves on the Senate’s Budget and Finance committees, says it will be difficult for former Missouri U.S. Representative Billy Long to accomplish all he’s hoping to do at the IRS.
Grassley says, “He says he’s going to change the IRS letters to something that — I don’t know exactly the three letters he gave us, but it’s to make IRS a more friendly organization.”
If he is placed in charge of the agency and its 90,000 workers, Grassley says Long would have an uphill battle trying to change the public’s long-held perceptions of the IRS, which collected some $4.7 trillion dollars in gross taxes during Fiscal Year 2023.
“Instead of being feared, he wants to be a service for the American people, and we ought to applaud him on that because the IRS is actually feared by people,” Grassley says. “If you get a letter from the IRS, it just scares the heck out of you.”
Grassley says he told Long, if he becomes commissioner, how important it is that he respond to inquiries from Congress as they relate to government oversight.
“I asked him to reinstate the IRS whistle blowers, (Gary) Shapley and (Joe) Ziegler, that were so prominent, whistle blowers, blowing the whistle on Hunter Biden not paying his taxes, and they were treated like skunks at a picnic,” Grassley says. “And they ought to have their job back. They ought to have even a promotion.”
Grassley says he also told Long about legislation he got passed in 2005 that focused on blowing the whistle on corporations that evade paying taxes. He says it’s brought the U.S. Treasury more than six-billion dollars, but Grassley says the IRS isn’t making adequate use of that law and could be netting much more money from corporate tax evaders.