Danny Werfel was got US Senate confirmation in a surprising 54-42 vote….
Democratic US Senator Manchin from West Virginia voted against the guy……
He will be stepping into a shit storm…..
The President is counting on Werfel to use the $80 Billion slated for the Revenue Service to allow it to collect BILLIONS more money for the Government to cut its deficit….
Werfel will be harsssed by some Republican lawmakers in the House who do NOT want the government collecting more money for the rich and businesses….
The Senate on Thursday confirmed President Joe Biden’s pick to head the IRS, handing veteran federal government official Danny Werfel the high-pressure responsibility of spending a massive new windfall meant to transform the agency amid a fierce GOP offensive against virtually everything it does.
The Senate voted 54-42 to approve Werfel, with the support of six moderate Republicans who said he was a competent manager with the ability to steer the agency in the right direction…..
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His overriding order of business at the IRS will be managing how the unprecedented $80 billion influx is spent. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had promised to deliver a blueprint for the spending by February, but missed the deadline.
In addition to playing defense with Republicans, lawmakers also want to see improved customer service — an abysmal 250 million of 282 million calls to the taxpayer help line went unanswered in 2021 — and upgrades to the computer systems that lawmakers from both sides consider woefully outdated.
IRS employees have also traditionally had to manually enter information from paper returns number by number, a labor-intensive process that severely bogged down the agency during the pandemic and that Treasury hopes to now fix with new digital scanning technologies.
Republicans, however, say the administration’s true intent is to unleash an army of auditors on middle-class taxpayers and small businesses, with Finance Committee ranking member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) saying Wednesday that achieving the agency’s collection targets will be impossible without violating Yellen’s pledge to not increase audits on those making less than $400,000.
Werfel managed to alleviate at least some of those concerns for the Republicans who voted for him: Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collinsof Maine, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Todd Young of Indiana.
“Danny Werfel showed an openness to different ways to update IRS processes. This is long overdue,” said Cassidy on why he voted for Biden’s pick…