Washington, DC — Senator Chuck Grassley is putting some caveats on the promise that a Republican majority in congress will be able to repeal the plan to hire 87,000 IRS agents.
Last weekend, Grassley said those IRS agents probably won’t be hired if Republicans hold a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate and House after this year’s election. This week, Grassley said it would be a long process and Senate debate rules could prevent the GOP from taking action. “When that bill would come to the Senate, we’d have to have 60 votes to get it done,” Grassley says, “and there’d have to be some bipartisanship.” If that 60 vote threshold is cleared and the bill passes, it would be up to President Biden to decide whether it becomes law. And it was the Biden Administration that proposed spending to modernize the IRS computer system and hire new agents to replace retiring staff over the next decade.
That’s a rarity. Congress has voted to override just six presidential vetoes in the past 21 years. In 1996, Grassley was appointed as one of 17 members on the National Commission on Restructuring the IRS.
Grassley helped write a 1998 law that reorganized divisions within the agency and limited some auditing techniques.
Grassley was cheered by the crowd at Congresswoman Ashley Hinson’s fundraiser when he said a GOP congress probably would vote to repeal the IRS hiring plan.
