Transcripts For CSPAN2 Public Affairs 20130628 : vimarsana.c

the chairman s continued silence or excusing of the abuse of the groups makes it harder for these groups to come before us. we need to be a committee of facts and not a witchhunt. if we plan to get to the bottom of the investigation and hopefully, hopefully be able to tackle other legislative issues that we have coming before this committee of great importance to the country. so i demand that this republican culture of intimidation against progressive groups be stopped and that they be as outraged as we were outraged, democrats were outraged and we expressed our outrage when groups if we don t agree with politically or ideologically are being attacked or being intimidated or being investigated by the irs. i would like to see a modicum of similar outrage from my republican colleagues of what we held when the folks testify before this committee that we don t politically agree with that we stood by them instead as americans they should not be investigated. that jonas time should has expired and i mentioned progressives were on the lookout list or the bolo list. will the chairman deal? no i will not you. where was the outrage? i thought you were talking about a modicum of this committee and the gentleman continues to enter up a chair. you have had your five minutes. you referred to me by name as the chairman and i m going to respond. i would prefer the gentleman try and opening statement where i mentioned and i made one thing clear that no taxpayer regardless of political affiliatiaffiliati on should be unfairly targeted and with that i will yield to the gentleman from illinois. that for a begin my question and i think i would say i think the chairman has been more than accommodating, more than out reaching to the other side here and in fact the chair would indulge when we had our first hearing where we invited witnesses who work the dems of targeting, the chair asked for witnesses from the minority and what the chair remind us how many minority witnesses were submitted? there were none. thank you. mr. werfel thank you. on page 14 of your report they submitted to this committee you outlined a proposal to eliminate the backlog of 501(c)4 the irs. you specifically suggest to eliminate this back like you asked for these 501(c)(4) applicants to certify under penalty of perjury to the irs that no more than 40% of their expenditures and volunteer hours will go towards political campaign activity and the remaining 60% would go to the promotion of social welfare. if that is certified by the 501(c)(4) applicants, it is your policy than that the applicant will be approved in the next two weeks. that is correct. i would write like to bring attention to a specific case and ask how that would fall under this category. specifically the 60/40 rule that you are reporting. is this a hypothetical case? this is a real-life case. i might have difficulty answering it very. lets try. on tuesday the president unveiled his plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. within hours millions of e-mails were sent to his re-election campaign supporters through barack obama.com, the url owned by organizing 527 organization. within the e-mail it asks on its volunteers to quote call out via twitter, e-mail letters facebook and so on numbers of congress who are so-called quote climate change deniers. the action item doesn t just suggest they should educate but rather that they should call them out. it then links to 85 plus members of congress that they would like to be targeted all of whom are republican and many of whom are on this committee. under that circumstance i am wondering whether or not that i to the, those hours and that money would be classified under the political campaign activity or under their promoting social welfare category. is a good question. you re getting into a territory where i m not a legal expert but i will do my best to provide clarity as far as i understand this and the rule of law here. to understand the political campaign intervention has to do, and i m answering these questions is a broad matter because i don t want to get into 6103 issues by the specific taxpayer so i want to qualify my answers in the broad context of how we think about the political campaign intervention. the key issue is is the entity seeking c-4 status attempting to influence the outcome of an election by supporting a poor euler candidate or opposing a particular candidate and the federal election committee has provided guidance. when you have a situation which for example and add mentions a candidate within 30 days of an election they say there you go, at that point in time you have political campaign intervention but if they mentioned that candidate 120 days before an election is not as clear and more work needs to be done so to get to your question is a broad matter one of the first questions i would have been analyzing it and i think the lawyers who are experts is, is their candidate involved and is the activity intended to influence the outcome of an election? there are 85 members of congress specifically targeted. again, i don t want to get too specific. i understand you don t want to get too specific to the point i m tempting to make is the rule you re proposing requires the applicant to make a determination and so as the commissioner of the irs imposing the rule under not a hypothetical but a real case situation if you can make a determination how can we then ask a nonattorney, nonirs commissioner, nonirs employee to make that same determination under penalty of perjury to classify their activity as either advocating or promoting social wealth or or political campaign activity if we are going to limit it under 60/40 rule. i was talking a general level. there are specific guidance we can apply in our application and a we asked the taxpayer to look at and determined whether they are meeting the criteria. right now me articulating it to the taxpayers done in much more specificity in the materials of the taxpayer receives in terms of exactly how to answer those questions. again, the key issue is are they attempting to influence the outcome of an election? you take it from there and do further analytics and the taxpayer can help determine whether they believe their expenditures will go higher than 40% for those types of activities. i realize my time has expired and i would like if i i can to follow up on a virus on exactly how this new rule would then be enforced whether it be additional auditing or it would require additional personnel. i can provide for the record more specific guidance that we get the taxpayer. it was just handed to me but it may not be the best interest to read it out out loud. you can submitted to the committee. mr. paulson is recognized. thank you mr. chairman. mr. werfel you open your report with the findings that the irs used in appropriate criteria that identified the tea party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based on their name or policy positions. for some of the organizations, were they asked for their donor lists? it s my understanding roughly 27 entities were asked for their donor lists. do you know if these donor lists were used to target individual donors with the irs for audits? i don t have precise information on exactly how that information was used. i think that is part of the ongoing review. the reason i m asking is part of the report on page 31 of the enforcement section of the report states that all current indications are that this sort of political activity analysis and ambiguity and subjective utilization of criteria does not occur elsewhere in the irs. it seems pretty definitive. what i was referring to us there are four main operating divisions within the irs that deal with the administration. the one that is the subject of this audit report is the tax-exempt governmental organizations. the conclusion reached in the report is right right right nown areas in our wage and investment division that deals with individual taxpayers, small business and large business. we don t have current evidence that the criteria and the screening criteria are appropriate. we have asked our leaders to review it in one of the main reasons we are more reassured in that conclusion and that conclusion is that it is very rare outside of this part of the irs for political activity is relevant to any determination. why would they assume that many of these issues should be consider rare to occur in the first place? i know there s a publication. it s the declaration of taxpayer rights and part of the report is submitted. it states up front irs employees will explain and protect your rights as a taxpayer throughout your contact with us. the irs will not disclose to anyone the information you give us except as authorized by law here it we know that that is our to been violated and has been leaked publicly. you have a right to know why we are asking for the information how people use it. we know that also has not be followed through because organized nations have testified before this committee that they asked why certain information was being asked for and there was no response for follow up. i will just tell you that i also have constituents, many minnesotans that are in my district who are also very fearful who have come forward to me concerned that they also have become targets because in recent years audits that have been stepped up by their accountants and their finance planners, they are concerned it s happening because of their political activity. this all occurred over the last couple of years and other members of congress on this committee and the entire body have expressed the same concerns. several told me these personal stories of these accountants telling them we have never ever in the history of our experience , we keep the books clean and we monitor activities and have never had this type of system audited on an individual to this level before. we now know the information on individual donors is collected and we know that information has been leaked in these audits have been testified on individuals. from my perspective the report before us has some glaring omissions and that will have to be a follow-up report coming down the road. and they and what assurance can you give the american people? can you give this committee to make ensure that individual taxpayer rights are being protected and there s a plan in place to make sure that will happen? two reactions. i probably should have said this earlier to this committee and to the chairman. to the extent there is a particular area in the report questions that aren t answered me along with the irs would be interested to have that deepak and commit to exploring those questions with this committee and figuring out the best way to get answers. our goal with this report was to present, several things. to recognized for the taxpayers to recognize our failures up front, to recognize that we made fundamental mistakes. they are more questions to be asked about the nature of how those mistakes occurred that we recognize those mistakes exist. we want to show the mac and people in his report that we recognize them and we are putting together and actively implementing corrective actions to move forward. we brought in experts, public sector management to help lead the irs going forward on these activities and some of those activities involve reviewing our current operations to ask the very questions you are answering. mr. werfel let me ask you this is my time runs out that there are several employees and you described appropriate procedures but are you seeking the removal of ms. lerner or indie other individuals and as congress need to have legislative changes that would allow you to hold these employees accountable so that we can make sure the trust is restored for the american people and you can just answer briefly. i will answer in two ways. one with respect to specific employee i can inform you of our current actions. i just have to do it in a nonpublic setting to protect that employee s privacy. secondly as i said earlier they were due process procedures in place that are put in place for federal employees with respect to how they are disciplined for for i m not going to comment on whether they are good or bad. i m saying right now that i m following the rule of law and moving as aggressively as i can. thank you. ms. sanchez s recognize. thank you mr. chairman. mr. werfel i want to state my appreciation for you being here and answering these questions. i know you been on the job roughly a month and i m sorry but so my colleagues seem to be confusing you with the main decision-maker at the irs so just to clarify little bit, you are not personally responsible for things like tax refund abuses or conference spending abuses or bonus abuses. that is not your position is at? no, i am here and i want to stand by my irs colleagues. i m here to make sure that any actions that have occurred before i got there that need correcting our getting corrected. thank you. i think you are an easy target and nobody really likes the irs so it s easy touche throw a different issues at you when they are specifically here to talk about the tax-exempt applications in the process that went on there. you are still investigating that matter, your initial 30-day report is not a final report. there are several entities that have ongoing investigations tuesday including potential criminal investigations. the justice department is actively looking at that right now. you have stated an arrest times and people have said you have seen the little dispassionate but there are rules you need to follow as we investigate these allegations. i don t feel dispassionate. i feel very concerned and i think the report has some important language about failures of leadership and management that are very critical but yes, that concern and that sense of urgency which i certainly feel, has to be balanced against these procedures that need to take place the coast they are legally required. i can t reinforce mistakes that the irs made in the past and not following appropriate receipt is required and legislation. i appreciate that because i ve the legal background and maybe other members of the committee don t appreciate that but i would like to point out that well justice was often swift it was not correct and nor was it often fair. i think that is compounding the potential failures of the iras with the mistakes in how the investigation is handled and what can be done hastily and not early. i don t think that serves the american public. i will be right here before this committee answering tough questions so we are going to do this by the rule of law. i appreciate that very much. your initial assessment of preliminary port is perhaps an appropriate criteria was used by a group of irs officials in selecting certain applications for further review. that is are finding that there was an appropriate criteria similar to what the ig found. if during the course of your continued investigation that assessment were to change, that would be in an updated report i m assuming. yes, my hope is that the type of information we garner helps us understand better the circumstances that led to these and appropriate criteria being used. thank you and i very much appreciate your initial report, the identification of certain areas of failures at the irs and certain suggestions moving forward in ways that you can make the process fair and sort of more transparent one. one of the things that i wanted to ask you about because of something that perhaps is little known, your report suggests that the taxpayer advocates office could have helped exempt organizations that were struggling to have their application processed by the irs. that is correct. the national taxpayer advocate plays a very critical role helping had taxpayer having trouble resolving their matter before the irs. they do a very effective job in many situations. i think in looking at the situation in particular we noted a very small or to minimus amount of contact between the taxpayers 501(c)(4) applicants receiving unfair burdensome requests and all the things they went through. there is a lack of connectivity between them and the national taxpayer advocate and that is a lesson learned for us and we want to try to educate taxpayers better on the avenues they have to help when they are having trouble resolving the matter with the irs. do you think they brought education project can make them aware of the fact that there is a taxpayer advocate would be beneficial? it s one of our recommendations in the report. much has been made about the funding and how the funding is spent at the iras and there is no request for additional funding for enforcement but one thing that i m hearing from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is on the one hand they want you to enforce these people who are cheating on refunds and they want you to come down hard on the people abusing the tax code that by the same token they don t want to pay for that and on the other hand too much enforcement pits the pitts the little guy against the irs. what i wanted opportunity to do before this committee is demonstrate two things. one that the irs is making real process progress in cutting our budget in areas of travel conferences and others in two if we can increase our funding in critical areas related to enforcement and taxpayer service we will position the irs for success in the future. thank you mr. chairman. thank you. mr. marchant. mr. werfel in one of your first days on the job i wrote a letter addressed to you requesting that you find out the status of my district that tea party. is it your representation that over the next week or two weeks this organization will receive its determination and? let the answer that question very carefully since you named a particular taxpayer and i have to be very cautious. i will lift up your question and say that all taxpayers that are in our priority backlog who are in this advocacy group that are in the backlog for more than 120 days will receive a letter from the irs this week explaining their option to self-certify and get an expedited approval. this particular group joined in a lawsuit with the aclj. will that lawsuit have any effect whatsoever on the determination of that rope root for any group that is inside that? two responses. i definitely don t want to comment on the lawsuit and secondly i will just repeat my earlier point. if they are in the backlog they are getting the record. so there will be no retribution for a group that joined the lawsuit? was certainly be the of the irs not to have any retribution in those situations. if there is an entity if there is an entity that is in the backlog it is our intention to send them this letter and if they don t receive a letter for whatever reason then they should immediately they can reach out to you, this committee or the national taxpayer advocate will look into it but again our intention is to try to get every entity within that back log to the extent appropriate a letter. on february the 11th, the subcommittee that i serve on chaired by mr. boustany wrote the acting commissioner a request to produce a parody video that contained no training content and was produced at the taxpayer expense. the subcommittee also asked for the cost of the video and any other video produced with the irs resources. two months later and three letters later we had the video in hand. it turned out that video was produced as entertainment for the famous irs convention as was mentioned. imagine the committee surprise when laid on friday, may 31 i believe after you have taken over in an effort to get ahead of this report, expected the following week, the irs, about the irs is lavish spending at this conference it turned out that this video depicting line dancing of irs employees was also produced in the 2010 conference. it was wrong for the iras not to undertake a good-faith search in february for other responsive material but that was not on your watch. when was the second video brought to your attention? very early. obviously very early in my turn. i arrived on may 22 and may 23 and was one of the earlier issues that was raised to me in terms of, it was my understanding that this committee had a request for videos and we were delivering those. were you provisioned immediately to the committee? it s my recollection that once i became aware of it and we had in hand it was worth requested by the committee we provided it. therein made be a need to redact some of the people s names to protect privacy but we turned that video over to you very quickly. were you or others consulting consulting how to produce that video for congress? how to produce it? i am not aware on how to produce it. i don t understand your question. let me follow up. lack of transparency pertains to this video. and being from texas, very bad line dancing. for something more consequential chairman boustany wrote then acting commissioner steven miller on may 10 asking that all documents containing the word tea party in the list of irs employees involved in targeting and he wrote back on june 7 that you consulted with the treasury on the correspondence that you have before you. i talked generally to the treasury department about our correspondence with the committee to make sure, giving them an update on the various requests we are receiving in how we are producing information. i don t have a particular recollection that we talked about this letter but generally we do talk about discovery requests we get from congress. thank you. ms. black. thank you mr. chairman and thank you mr. werfel for being here and helping us to work to this situation. i want to start out by saying that the very basis of any relationship is trust and we certainly see here that the trust has been broken. there is no doubt about that. i think prior to all of this being revealed over the last several months here if you were to ask someone what kind of reaction do you have in the letter from the irs they would have already said, they are so powerful that even if i haven t done something intentionally they are going to come down on me. it s not an organization that helps you work through something if you haven t done it properly. a lot of uncertainty. i can call one day and get one answer in the next and get another answer. there is already this image of the irs with people prior to this and i think that this is all just confirmed. what their feelings were that there was a distrust and they fear. restoring this trust is going to be very difficult. i just want to go back and chronicle a couple of things that have been said here and i m going to add one to it. obviously we are here for the targeted issue that is what this hearing was called for but also we heard chairman johnson talk about and i was on the committee and heard mr. miller at belief is here the day that we talked about the abusive parent income tax credit that resulted in billions of dollars of properly being sent to people. there wasn t a concern that we could even work together to fix this. we actually had to bring legislative action to fix fix i. sherry ryan talks about the misuse or the inappropriate use of funds on these activities over $100 million which is a significant amount of money obviously. chair boustany talked about the bonuses given out to people that perhaps aren t even involved in the semican be sure that those bonuses are really bonuses that they deserve. i also want to lift up a report that showed that 1.7 million recipients received over $2.6 billion of improper payment where we couldn t confirm that the even attended the school but they were asking for the tax credit for it or the american opportunity tax refund. and and so we see over and over again that this is not just about what s happening here in targeting is a very serious issue but it s a culture. there is a prevailing culture within this organization that leads people to think when they turn on the television night after night and they continue to see one thing after another after another, that there is a reason to distrust this organizatorganizat ion that has so much power over them. so my question for you is in your report, you to report that there are three things you are looking at accountability fixing the problem with tax-exempt status and the third area was a broad view of the iras operations. are those three things only related to what s happening with the tax-exempt versus something that you love that overall? it is broader. in section 3 of the report what we attempt to do is we draw for general conclusions coming out of this issue with respect to the ig report and we ask questions about the broader portability of those four areas into the rest of the irs and we analyze each question and come up with a series of actions intended to deal with the issue. an example and i think an important one is the taxpayers that were not getting the appropriate customer service or treatment by being in a backlog to log in getting the inappropriate i m going to interrupt you because i m going to be limited on my time here. i would like to know your plan and i know you can t give me your whole plan today but given what we are seeing here there has got to be a plan to show the american taxpayer they can have confidence that they can trust the irs with their most personal information. initialed blueprint of the planets in section 3 of this report and i would love feedback on it and certainly there are places we can fill out into more and i think this report is about starting a dialogue. i m going to run out of time. you have found no evidence that anyone had any role in initiating the tea party targeting. the question that i have for you is did you come to this conclusion by asking the white house or treasury officials whether they were aware of the activity? i came to this conclusion by looking at the evidence that we had which is a variety of documents e-mails employ interviews conducted by the ig in the audit report. we have also said there is more evidence it needs to be done. i hope you will have a conversation with those in the white house all the way up to the president and that would be a part of your report that comes as well. thank you. i yield back. .. how would that work? how do you propose to have that work? this week, the taxpayers that are in our party backlog for more than 120 days will receive a letter that will explain to this new program that we have that would enable them to get a fast-track approval if they are willing to certify to these particular facts and realities. as i said, it has to do with their expenditures and the voluntary personal powers and not to exceed certain thresholds. so if they feel comfortable that they can attest to that s the way they will carry out their operations with respect to political and social welfare activity, they will sign the document just like the signed application today, submitted to the irs and we will give them an approval. and if their activities change they will be required to let us know and it s possible, like with any taxpayer that they could be reviewed on auditor exam at some later point, and if we find compliance we will move forward. if we find noncompliance we will deal with at that time. i know that much of our conversation has been about transgressions and activity that was outside the realm of what one would expect. and also know that history is history, and that is very difficult to change what has already happened. but it s not impossible to make sure that it does not happen again. you mentioned in your report that there are certain risks that come and information relative to operations of the entire agency that the commissioner s office may not have had enough information about. yes. and that you would want too seriously analyze that. and how do you change that information gap that may exist? when i came to the irs i recognized that across the organization, i do not believe today there is enough work being done to both identify, categorize, understand, emerging risks and operational challenges within the organization, and bring it together on a portfolio basis across the irs so that the senior leadership of the irs can understand those issues and deal with them, not just deal with them. by having transparency and then it automatically triggers accountability for them to do with it. it creates an environment in which the leadership and the division itself are working together towards a solution, and very important, it enables the leadership to then push that information out earlier in the process to the irs oversight board, to the ig if necessary, to this committee as necessary. we have an architecture that we re putting together, and enterprisewide risk management program, that will redefine the way in which we capture this information and report it out. it seems very textbook and within this report, but it s actually very important and it s potentially i believe transformational to giving at some of the root of the very issues that this committee is raising. how can we thank you. mr. young is recognized. thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you, commissioner for being here today. you are certainly entering this organization at a difficult time. your organization, like all others, is only as effective, only as good as the people that populate it. and by extension from the extent to which real people accountable. we have many good public spirited, conscientious public servants working in the irs and other agencies. and we must ensure that we don t put forward any baseless sort of disciplinary actions with respect to these individual. i know you agree with that. my preference would be to hold these individuals, however, to the same standards that other workers around the country outside of the federal government must pertain to. you have said time and again during this hearing that we need to discover the facts, or some variant of this. first, discover the facts, wait until sex reemerge and then take corrective action. entirely reasonable and i agree with that. this would presumably apply to personnel actions as well. we ve taken some bold actions over at the irs with respect to management failures within your agency. replacing for individuals, five positions. this is probably displayed in your plan of action here. and so when i want to know is what specific facts have you collected which justify the replacement of steve miller quickly will begin with mr. miller. okay. as i mentioned earlier, at that level of the organization, we perceived in our review a deficiency in leadership in afghanistan earlier in the process the emerging challenges our happened within the exempt organization year, the emerging concerns or been registered by taxpayers. a lot of activities that were going on in the ig report should have surfaced to the leadership before the ig rider to their attention. what did he to do? weather signals that existed that he failed to identify? did he failed to put in place quality control mechanisms that should have existed? this ought to be documented. i know that throughout our federal government, union protections for your rank-and-file workers are typically also applied at the higher echelons of management. so you had overcome a pretty high threshold of evidence before the decision was made to replace steve miller, or any of these other individuals. so i want to know with particularly why was steve miller replaced, commissioner? let me first state that i was not have the irs when the situation happen. that was a decision i think that was determined between mr. miller, the secretary treasury and the president on terms of whether the conference had been lost due to this current situation, but has been documented? have the reasons for the decision to replace mr. miller been documented the? isps or could they be articulate by the new commissioner, yourself, though you go by slightly different out of? i think, this report is in part an attempt to provide review of what was done in the organization at multiple levels and i think we talked very explicitly about particular, and i think we didn t buy them as failures, within the commissioner s office to come and i think these are exact words i think we does, to identify, prevent, correct and disclose the information that was to my constituents that sounds like a wad of washington speak. a lot of worse. you are taking up my time. i five minutes but i appreciate an answer but maybe i need to ask the question into the way. i move to a different individual. how about joseph grant? can you tell me with specificity why joseph grant was removed from his position as acting commissioner tax exempt and government entities division? again, let me take a step back and make sure that i don t violate anyone s rights of privacy. let me also step back and make sure that it don t impugn any particular individual, because these are organizational layers, the sailors were both individual and organizational. i don t want to necessarily place the holistic blame for the situation on a given individual. there was a collective organizatorganizat ional failure. there were particular individual failures. and i don t think in 25 seconds i cannot take a i don t either because you use the clock, you re down to the end that i did appreciate the answers that had been forthcoming. i would like to know, like you to report to this committee what disciplinary action beyond replacement of these individuals has been taken. we can apply that to you in a different setting. right, and perhaps you ll think of or acquired through other means the reasoning behind these separations and communicate those with congress as well. thank you. thank you. mr. kelly. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. werfel, because i sing along the same way as mr. young coming out of the private sector, i did notice you to have a great deal of concern for the folks that we re asking you to take a look at right now and saying, make sure we don t violate any of the rights or privacy. and i think that s very noble. and i think that is your desire, but what i m back home in western pennsylvania and people ask me about, you know, why are they able to do this and why are they able to continue doing these things and nothing happens? what i would like to say is, our role as congress is to be a for the people that we represent, who voted us into office. wait a minute. i guess my question would be, we are so concerned about these individuals right to privacy, but if these folks that were targeted, we don t have the same amount of concern. and for all this idea about my rights, my privacy, all those things seem to be secondhand to an agency that you re running right now. there s over 90,000 people, is that correct? yes. and $11 billion budget. my goodness, is there any doubt that anything this big and this expensive could possibly be reined in? i don t understand how you would ve. i think it s a noble idea but i don t know that it can be done. and again moving forward though, tell me, the people that were let go, what can you do to assure the american people that they really haven t been let go, have they? there s a combination of personal actions that have been taken but no one has been let go? there s, again, there s been [talking over each other] spent an easy answer. has anyone been fired yet as a procedural matter? no. but all these options are being pursued. the user get redeployed. i see anybody get let go for anything. and i know that you don t have a lot of tools in your toolbox when people go on a leave of absence. that s always fake. i think that american taxpayers, shouldn t somebody be watching our dollars. you don t have that speed is people do get fired from the federal government. is a process. i understand all that, but in my two and a half years here, any other wrongdoing, nobody s have been let go. they have been redeployed, reposition, put on people pleading the fifth when they come before the people s house to answer questions about something that they could be involved and i know there s a rule of law. i can appreciate that but that adds then to the public s distrust and philosophy of the government signed a have a large job on your history as we go forward though, you said to start off, and maybe i didn t understand, but more investigation needs needs to be done. how long do you foresee this going? that s a good question. make sure that [inaudible] the amount of interviews and document review that would enable us to revisit the issues and see where we are. i think that s probably the right confident of time. what i said over at that point? no. i think it seems to me a good milestone to check in and figure out how the third so far what i ve seen in your comments is that there s been a lot of wrongdoing or some things were not handled the right way but nothing that you could say it was intentional. at this time we haven t seen anything but we are open to the fact that it may have occurred. which want to make sure that we re doing all the right due diligence spent i understand that. justice which real quick to cincinnati. did it originate in cincinnati and don t happen in cincinnati? is a go in deeper, can you tell that you? what i think is important to understand i m running out of time but did you know there were individuals, here s the point, i need to make this point of the individual that supervises the cincinnati office sat in washington, d.c. i understand and address know you don t know yet whether it is just in cincinnati? we don t know the and. if you wanted to expand i could but i don t have the time. i don t know the definitive answer to the question. is any doubt in your mind that it doesn t lead to back farther speak as i don t understand the question. is it just cincinnati or does it come towards washington? how high does it go? i was about to say the people in washington, d.c., in particular for example, the position of director rulings and agreement which is in my okay so could go further. there are five levels but needs the commissioners office but they re involved in these activities and the office is in washington, d.c. i switch it to the people ever present back in northwest pennsylvania do not for any, they don t believe right now that there s going to be a serious inquiry into this and they don t think that the irs is going to come out of its own or the ministers would also but it s going to be up to us and congress to continue to look for the answers are pixar we shall look the answers are pics i wish you luck on your job and also would say this is critical to the faith and trust the people have in this government right now. their tank is running on zero because we haven t seen anything yet that make sense to the american people that this is fair and just to them. mr. renacci and then mr. griffin. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. werfel, urbina. i was watching all this questionnaire and all this questionnaire and mining of the day semi-private sector like when i was hired to go into a bad situation and turned him around and that s exactly what you ve had to do and had to report every week in bankruptcy and the situations as a trusted representative. so one of the things that people always wanted to note in those was what he going to do change things, how are you going to fix things? things? i can those are the light of questions that american people want to be. and want to the answers. i ve got a lot of questions i want ask you for just yes or no answer to could want to go back to the weekend. did you talk to the treasury about your testimony, in discovery today? i consult with the treasury about visiting. did you supplied in your testimony or submit your testimony? my test but today was the report, so they had to report. did a treasury make any corrections or revisions or make suggestions on what you would say or not say or submit today? i wouldn t say corrections. i mean, i was keeping him informed of how the report did they make they offered kind of high level suggestions but as an important point i don t think we got a single line edited from that. general guidance speaks for you to discuss, okay. ranking member levin said in his opening statement that individuals at the irs the targeted groups should be relieved of their duties. i may have quoted that, relieved of duty. i agree. do you agree with mr. levin? i believe that if if they targeted? if there s management neglect or inappropriate conduct, then it depends on the nation extent of the management if they targeted groups and 10 shall yes. i would agree. you testified showtimes today there was no intentional wrongdoing. was the wrongdoing? i said is not evidence yet of intentional wrongdoing but yes, i would articulate there is wrongdoing minute like i said at a lot of questions. you testified that there was neglect of duty. you said that earlier. deeply there was neglect of duty? i do. so there was wrongdoing and it was neglect of duty but there was no intentional wrongdoing, would you agree? is no evidence yet of intentional wrongdoing but i m not going to reach a definitive conclusion until all the evidence is obtained. you believe targeting of individuals and organizations for political purposes is illegal? target with political bias? yeah, i think there is locale to be. serving consistent with the irs mission statement. you think it was wrongdoing? yes. you believe there was neglect of duty? yes. to the irs seek removal of ms. lerner speak as i can answer that question in this setting but answer that question a different setting to you directly. so you can t answer whether she was asked to resign or be fired at? not in this setting but in a separate setting i can. what is ms. learned to write a? i can t answer that question in this setting. deeply the irs, again i m going to go back, deeply the irs in place working to target someone for local purposes should be fired? if it was based on political animus or that type of intent, yes. if the seriousness of the management neglect was into the private level of services, then yes. the restructuring format in 1998 spent on where the act but you have to tell you exactly which section you are referring to. a list of 10 deadly sins can determine it for? yes. are you aware that political targeting is on that or not on a? i don t have the list memorized, but i can look into it. i think, i think it s implied through other more general criteria. specifically not mention. and you think of any reason why we should not add the targeting of an individual by the irs agent to a? given these events i think it s a readable suggestion spirit well, i agree and so you know i will be introducing the language to dead and i hope your agency will support that. mr. chairman, i yield back. thank you. mr. griffin is recognized. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. werfel, urbina. i also have heard great things about your reputation, and i hope that you will get to the bottom of this. i want to raise some specific questions though. this report, charting a path forward at the irs, is a public report. and in this town as you know you d been here a while and i spent some time in this town. a public report whether it s intended to be or not is a political report. people are going to seize upon what s in that report, and they re going to statements like the one that you made where you have not found evidence of intentional wrongdoing on behalf of irs personnel. they re going to season statements like that, and they re going to hold that up as a see there, no evidence. i was a staff investigator here in the house, been a prosecutor. did you not know that by putting that in the statement you were communicating to the world, even though this is simply an update, you were communicating to the world from a political perspective that there is no evidence of wrongdoing? i understand factually what you mean, but the reason this has gotten so much attention is because what a responsible investigator would say is, either nothing where that line exists, or the investigation continues. the idea that you would say there is no evidence of intentional wrongdoing at this point is, i worked at the white house in political affairs, you ve worked at the white house, i worked up here, that s a political statement. whether you intended it to be or not, that s a political statement that, that would be needed to or not, gives cover to people politically at a time when lois lerner pled the fifth amendment, where any, anybody who s gone to youtube and same the testimony of high level irs officials in front of this committee, based on what we know now, it s clear that they were, they were not being forthright and telling the whole truth with this committee. now, whether that constitutes what you would call evidence or not, if i knew that one of my top lieutenants had just pled the fifth and the other tenants had given less than the whole truth to this committee, and i saw a staff person write that sentence, if they did, i would take it out. so my first question is, did you write that sentence or did a staff member write that sentence? we, there s a group of people, i was one of the authors. we co-authored it amongst a group of people i ll take ownership over every sentence in this document if you limit opportunity i can respond to some of your points, but i don t want to use your time. it s up to you. i would love to have a lot more time than i do. but, because unless i can keep going. maybe not. but to the white house it any time, i know the white house as i used to say, and abuse to come is not a person. did anyone at the white house review this statement? no. no one? not that i m aware of. okay. anyone at treasury? yes. yes. well, i let me just say, i did brief the president a few hours before the report went out on the morning the report was issued on monday, and they did mention this conclusion but i just want to make sure that that was clear spent i appreciate you pointing that out. i think, i think the bottom line is here we have an ongoing investigation here, an in this committee. we have an ongoing investigation in the senate. we have an ongoing investigation at another committee. we have a criminal investigation. we have a top lieutenant who has pled the fifth amendment. we have come in my view, we have video of high level officials getting less than the whole truth to this committee which is a potentially a criminal act. i just think that was the belief that statement or not, putting it in here with your background in washington, is irresponsible. and let me go on to the next point here. these individuals that you personally did not interview, josh grant, steven miller, doug shulman, lois lerner, can you tell me who is interviewing first of all, is somewhat independent? the inspector general, the justice department putting together a witnesses or have put together which is listed i m assuming it s evolving based on the fact that they re gathering and the professional investigators and both the inspectoinspector general and te justice department are conducting those entities. at the appropriate time they will share those results with me and i assume you in order to make sure we have a collective understanding of the facts spent all right. thank you. time is expired. thank you, mr. werfel, for your test what is going to end with that this hearing is now adjourned. [inaudible conversations] pessimistic. don t think you take away burned out athens and two-thirds of these to occupy the greeks would have fought or without bellisari the emperor would emperor would not have recovered much of the western part of byzantine roman empire. i don t think there was a union general i like it could have taken atlanta at the cost that virginia. i don t know anybody who could ve done with matthew ridgway and i wish i could say they were american generals, maybe one or two but not many that did what david petraeus did. middle east policy analyst discuss the obama administration s plan to supply searing rebel groups with weapons. the u.n. estimates as many as 100,000 people have died in syria s civil war. from the washington institute for near east policy this is an hour and a half.