[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12581]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LIFTING OF OBJECTION

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, on June 27, I provided notice of my 
intent to object to proceeding to the nominations of Mark J. Mazur, to 
be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and Matthew S. Rutherford, 
to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. My support for the final 
confirmation of these nominees depended on receiving information from 
both the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service regarding 
their implementation of the tax whistleblower program. Since I have 
received the responses, I no longer object to proceeding to these 
nominations.
  The IRS is making progress in paying whistleblower awards under the 
old statute over 90 awards paid from October 1, 2011, until now. 
However, I want to make clear that the responses do not alleviate my 
concerns about these agencies' implementation of changes to the tax 
whistleblower statute I authored almost 6 years ago. Regulations to 
implement the new reward program have yet to be issued and only a 
handful of awards are expected to be paid out before the end of this 
year.
  I began asking questions about the program's implementation in 2010. 
I wrote again in 2011 and then again on April 30 of this year. 
Unfortunately, I did not get complete answers until I objected to 
proceeding to the nominations of Mr. Mazur and Mr. Rutherford.
  If I hadn't objected to proceeding to these nominations, Congress 
would not have received the most recent annual report on the 
whistleblower program that is mandated by law. It was provided to 
Congress on June 13, 2012, for the fiscal year ended September 30, 
2011. That is almost 9 months from the end of the year for which it 
contains data.
  If I hadn't objected to proceeding to these nominations, the IRS 
likely would not have acknowledged that there is, in fact, a problem 
with timely processing whistleblower claims. IRS Deputy Commissioner 
Miller's June 20, 2012, directive to IRS executives and senior managers 
is a good first step toward correcting this problem.
  However, more needs to be done. IRS still has not committed to 
prioritizing claims raised by whistleblowers. In addition, the 
important protections afforded to taxpayers, including the right to 
appeal IRS decisions, delay IRS from actually collecting the taxes for 
years and, as the law is currently written, the taxes must be collected 
first before a whistleblower can be paid any money.
  From my long history of oversight of the IRS, I know that it is 
essential that taxpayers be protected from sometimes overeager IRS 
employees. Yet there must be a way to ensure that the process and 
procedures that exist to protect taxpayers don't deter whistleblowers 
from coming forward. The Treasury Department and the IRS have agreed to 
participate in a roundtable discussion that I hope will help identify 
solutions.
  It is unfortunate that objecting to these nominees, both of whom were 
approved by the Finance Committee by unanimous, bipartisan votes, was 
the only way I could get information about the whistleblower program. 
At least there is now more information than ever before about the IRS 
whistleblower program.

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