MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump's pick to lead the IRS faced tough questions today during his Senate confirmation hearing. Lawmakers quizzed former congressman Billy Long about his qualifications for the job. It was also a chance to ask about the direction of one of the most powerful and most feared government agencies. Committee Chair Mike Crapo set the tone for the hearing, noting that a lot of taxpayers regard the IRS as the enemy.
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MIKE CRAPO: Americans consistently rate it as one of the least favorable federal agencies, notwithstanding the fact that nearly all Americans must interact with it.
KELLY: Yes, indeed, we must. Well, NPR's Scott Horsley was monitoring the hearing today. He's here now. Hey, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you.
KELLY: OK, so before we get to just what happened today, give us the backdrop here because this has been - there's been a lot going on at the IRS.
HORSLEY: Yeah, President Trump has ordered widespread layoffs at the tax collection agency. He's also threatened to use the IRS to punish political enemies by taking away their tax-exempt status, and he's trying to harness tax data to locate and deport people who are living in the country illegally. So while all this is happening, the IRS has churned through four different acting commissioners over the last four months, and Republicans in Congress are trying to unwind some of what the IRS did during the Biden administration. So it all made for a lively hearing.
KELLY: All right, you just packed a lot in there. I want to tick through a few things one by one. Start with the layoffs. You said they're widespread. How widespread?
HORSLEY: Yeah. The tax collector has cut more than 11,000 jobs this year, including nearly a third of its auditors, and more layoffs are expected now that the tax filing season is behind us. Those cuts are going to make it hard for the IRS just to answer the telephone, let alone go after wealthy tax cheats. New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan asked Billy Long if he would commit to rolling back some of those staffing cuts.
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MAGGIE HASSAN: Customer service at the IRS in New Hampshire is worse today than it was several months ago.
BILLY LONG: I don't think having worse customer service is acceptable. I'm sorry...
HASSAN: No, it's not, and it takes people to provide customer service.
HORSLEY: Now, Long did not commit to restoring any jobs at the IRS, but he did say he'd worked closely with IRS staffers. And in fact, he promised to come into work 90 minutes early every day just to hear what the workforce is thinking.
KELLY: Meanwhile, as you know, President Trump has threatened to take away tax breaks from universities, from other nonprofit groups. Did Long weigh in on that?
HORSLEY: Yes, the president's threatened to strip Harvard and other universities of their tax-free status because he says they haven't done enough to fight antisemitism. But, you know, after Richard Nixon tried to use the IRS to go after his political enemies back in the 1970s, Congress passed laws explicitly barring the president and his staff from doing that. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren tried repeatedly to get Long to say it's illegal for the president to order the IRS around like that, but Long would not go quite that far.
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LONG: If I say I'm going to follow the law, why would you need to ask me the question?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Well, because I want to make sure that you understand what the law says. If you think follow the law means you just get to make it up on the spot, then, bud...
LONG: Now, I...
WARREN: ...You don't get to be the IRS commissioner.
KELLY: Scott Horsley, to the questions about taxpayer data, the privacy of taxpayers' information, did that come up today?
HORSLEY: It did. And, you know, this reflects also the legacy of the Richard Nixon era. After Watergate, Congress passed laws setting strict limits on who can have access to taxpayers' information. And so when Elon Musk's team tried to tap into that IRS database, there were a lot of protests and legal challenges, and Senator Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico pressed Long about that today.
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BEN RAY LUJAN: Do you believe the Department of Government Efficiency should have access to my constituents' private taxpayer data?
LONG: I don't think that anyone's taxpayer data should be released to anyone that it - doesn't need it for legitimate purposes...
LUJAN: I appreciate the...
LONG: ...Of the IRS.
HORSLEY: We are still testing what the limits of legitimate purposes are, though. For example, the IRS agreed to share tax information with immigration officials, and opponents are challenging that deal in court.
KELLY: That is NPR's Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: Great to be with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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