Trump and Musk Scheme to Destroy the IRS
And Congress is more than willing to make it happen.
On February 20th, termination letters were sent to 7,000 probationary employees at the IRS just as over 200 million tax returns were about to descend on the agency. In an e-mail sent this Wednesday, Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause reinstated them. Why? ProPublica uncovered that a top IRS lawyer warned the administration the letter, which fired the employees for poor performance, was “a false statement” that amounted to a phony predicate the Trump administration would claim in court, "an anticipatory fraud on tribunals of jurisdiction over these employment actions” in attorney Joseph Rillotta's words.
The performance of those dismissed had never been considered. To the contrary, many had received laudatory reviews. Krause had to back down. The cohort would continue to be paid but were not to return to work, never mind tax season.
President Trump may have instructed Elon Musk to start using a scalpel rather than a chainsaw, to keep good people and eliminate the “bad ones”, but the 7,000 remain unchanged as an arbitrarily chosen group with no attention given to individual merit.
LARCENY
On top of that, the "continuing resolution" passed by Congress a week ago — a Republican plan with deep cuts in social programs grudgingly acceded to by a few Democrats to avoid a government shutdown — contained a little noticed line item that docked the IRS $20 billion in funding. And it's not the first time.
Nothing so clearly illuminates the Republicans’ … Continue reading