WASHINGTON (AP) — A government watchdog has found that
the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least
220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, a House committee
said Sunday.
The chairman of that committee, Rep.
Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also released excerpts of congressional investigators' interviews with employees of the IRS office in
Cincinnati. Issa said the interviews indicated the employees were directed by
Washington to subject tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to tough scrutiny.
The excerpts provided no direct evidence that Washington had ordered that screening. The top Democrat on that panel,
Rep. Elijah Cummings
of Maryland, said none of the employees interviewed have so far
identified any IRS officials in Washington as ordering that targeting.
The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010
gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate
lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice,
according to a statement by the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including
baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost
$1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a
total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about
"leadership through art," the House committee said.
The report by the Treasury Department's inspector general, set to be
released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan
criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted tea party
and other conservative groups.
Agency officials and the Obama administration have said that
treatment was inappropriate, but the political tempest is showing no
signs of ebbing and has put the
White House on the defensive.
Three congressional committees are investigating, a Justice
Department criminal investigation is under way, President Barack Obama
has replaced the IRS' acting commissioner and two other top officials
have stepped aside.
The Treasury Department released a statement Sunday saying the
administration "has already taken aggressive and dramatic action to
reduce conference spending."
IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Sunday that spending on large
agency conferences with 50 or more participants fell from $37.6 million
in the 2010 budget year to $4.9 million in 2012. The government's fiscal
year begins Oct. 1 the previous calendar year.
On Friday, the new acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, released a
statement on the forthcoming report criticizing the Anaheim meeting.
"This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era," Werfel
said. "While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many
of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not
have occurred."
Issa's committee also released excerpts from interviews congressional investigators conducted last week with two
IRS employees from the agency's
Cincinnati office.
The excerpts omitted the names of those interviewed and provided no
specifics about individuals in Washington who may have been involved.
One of the IRS employees said in an excerpt that they were told by a
supervisor that the need to collect the reports came from Washington,
and said that in early 2010 the Cincinnati office had sent copies of
seven of the cases to Washington.
The other said "all my direction" came from an official the transcript said was in Washington.
One of the workers also expressed skepticism that the Cincinnati
office originated the screening without direction from Washington,
according to the excerpts.
Appearing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Issa said this conflicted with
White House
comments that have referred to misconduct by IRS workers in Cincinnati.
Without naming White House spokesman Jay Carney, Issa said the
administration's "paid liar, their spokesperson" is "still making up
things about what happens in calling this local rogue."
He added, "This is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood
right out of Washington headquarters and we're getting to proving it."
In briefings with reporters, Carney has not referred to the Cincinnati IRS office as "rogue."
"He's good at throwing out outlandish charges but it's unclear what
he's saying he lied about," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said of
Issa's remark.
Cummings said Issa's comments conflicted with a Treasury inspector
general's report that provided no evidence that the Cincinnati office
received orders on targeting from anyone else.
"Rather than lobbing unsubstantiated conclusions on national
television for political reasons, we need to work in a bipartisan way to
follow the facts where they lead," Cummings said.
The interviews with IRS employees were conducted by Republican and
Democratic aides on Issa's committee and also involved aides from both
parties from the House Ways and Means Committee.
One of the employees was a lower-level worker while the other was
higher-ranked, said one congressional aide, but the committee did not
release their names or titles.
The IRS Cincinnati office handles applications from around the
country for tax-exempt status. A Treasury inspector general's report in
May said employees there began searching for applications from tea party
and conservative groups in their hunt for organizations that primarily
do work related to election campaigns.
That May report blamed "ineffective management" for letting that
screening occur for more than 18 months between 2010 and 2012. But that
report — and three hearings by congressional committees — have produced
no specific evidence that the Cincinnati workers were ordered by anyone
in Washington to target conservatives.
The latest report on IRS conferences will be the subject of a hearing
Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Werfel is scheduled to make his first congressional appearance as
acting commissioner Monday when he appears before a subcommittee of the
House Appropriations Committee.
According to congressional aides briefed by the inspector general's
office, the IRS did not formally seek competitive bids for the city
where the agency's 2010 conference was held, for the event planner who
assisted the agency, or for the speakers.
The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a
confidential congressional briefing, said other benefits given to some
attendees at the Anaheim IRS conference included vouchers for free
drinks and some tickets to attend Angels baseball games.
Two videos produced by the IRS were shown at the Anaheim conference.
In one, agency employees did a parody of "Star Trek" while dressed like
the TV show's characters; the second shows more than a dozen IRS workers
dancing on a stage. The two videos cost the agency more than $50,000 to
make, aides said.
The lecturer who spoke about leadership through art produced six
paintings of subjects that included Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, the
rock singer Bono and the Statue of Liberty, the aides said.
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Eds: AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.
