Ban on Irs Bonuses Until Secretary of the Treasury Develops Comprehensive Customer Service Strategy

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEEHAN. 4890.

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Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am before the House today--really, before the Nation--on behalf of all of those frustrated taxpayers who have spent a great part of the last month, if not months before, in preparing their taxes in what is an increasingly complex Code. While we have a mission to simplify that Code, the fact of the matter is they have to deal with the challenges that they face today.

One of the agencies that they interact with or hope to interact with when they have questions is something called the Internal Revenue Service. I want to focus on that third word--``service''--because the idea here is we don't have some oversight agency, and we don't have some agency whose obligation and purpose in life is to make it harder on the average hardworking taxpayers, who are supporting the government with the money that they earn; it is to be a service--to use their resources to help the hardworking Americans who must pay taxes--and to simplify the process, particularly when they have questions of a very, very complex Code and its requirements that are being put on each and every one of them. When we talk about service, what we need to see is a pattern; and what we see is a pattern by which, unfortunately, the service of the IRS is deteriorating rapidly.

Let me give you the facts, and I am talking about what they call the answer time.

When an individual gets on the telephone because he is frustrated and he calls the IRS and says, ``I have a question,'' this year, the IRS estimates it will receive 48.4 million calls with people asking for assistance. Do you know how many they will answer? Sixteen million. That means that 32 million taxpayers will call the service, and their calls will go unanswered.

What kind of private entity could survive in this day and age if that was the kind of service that they were providing? What we are seeing is that this is going in a backwards fashion.

If you are able to get through and finally talk to somebody, the wait times a few years ago were 18.7 minutes. Well, how many people who are working at home, have other jobs, are doing things have 18.7 minutes just to wait for a phone call to be answered on an issue that they already have anxiety about? Well, those were the good old days, Mr. Chairman, 18.7 minutes, because today it is 34.4 minutes. If you are one of the lucky 30 percent who even gets their call answered, you wait 34.4 minutes.

It even gets better because what the IRS has implemented is a program now called a courtesy disconnect. Well, if that isn't the most oxymoronic thing that I have heard--a courtesy disconnect. In other words, we are going to tell you ahead of time, when you call, we are going to disconnect your call right away because we are going to tell you you are not going to be able to get through in time, so don't waste your time trying to contact the IRS. Now, that just exacerbates the level of frustration.

So what do we do about it? What is a solution? Let me tell you, Mr. Chairman, this isn't something that the Republicans on this side of the aisle have sat and said: Oh, let's go get the IRS.

Mr. Chairman, the GAO, which has overlooked this agency for, now, 3 straight years has been calling on the IRS to do something very simple. What they say is create a strategy and a plan to do a better job of answering those calls, of being responsive to those very taxpayers that your service requires you to do so. Just create a plan. It is that simple.

The GAO issued recommendations to the IRS that they first outline a strategy that defines appropriate levels of telephone and correspondence service and wait time lists and get specific steps to manage service based on an assessment of timeframes, demand capabilities, and resources. Just tell us how you can do it better.

Number two was direct the appropriate officials to systematically and empirically compare its telephone service to the best in business to identify gaps between actual and desired performance; in other words, see how it is being done in other places and aspire to do it as well. Well, as I said again, go back to the private sector. I imagine the people aren't making 60 percent of the people that call, they don't even answer it.

Lastly, just improve taxpayer service by requiring the Secretary of the Treasury to develop a comprehensive customer service strategy. That is what the GAO asked them to do. This recommendation has been repeated year after year. Unfortunately, the response of the IRS to the GAO was that their existing efforts were sufficient. They have yet to devise this plan.

Mr. Chairman, you tell me, when 60 percent of the calls are unanswered and those that are calling have wait times of over 35 minutes, tell me where that is sufficient. And therein lies the heart of the problem, the complete unwillingness to do a simple issue and to be responsive.

Now, there are other reasons, perhaps, that the IRS is diverting the very resources that have been put in by this Congress to support taxpayer services. In fact, the commitment to those taxpayer services has gone down dramatically each and every year:

In 2013, they put $190 million into ensuring that there were appropriate taxpayer services; and then, in 2014, they decreased it to $183 million to ensure that there were appropriate taxpayer services; and then, in 2015, they put $45 million into it.

So at a time when the GAO is telling them to do better, they are speaking with their own specific acts to say: We think it is sufficient. And not only do we think it is sufficient, we are actually pulling resources away from relations to the very taxpayers that we have an obligation to service.

Mr. Chairman, the bill is really quite simple, and it is in response to that continuing unresponsiveness of those who manage the IRS. It is simply saying to do what you have been requested to do.

Now, despite three GAO reports and continuing oversight by Congress, the refusal to be responsive to that, we looked and said a very simple thing. It says do not pay bonuses to the employees until you have fulfilled the very simple requirement of coming up with this plan.

Now, somebody might say to me: Well, that is outrageous. Put new obligations on the IRS. They have not done it in 3 years.

But guess who has? The Department of Labor does it. The Department of Agriculture does it. The Department of Education does it. The Office of Management and Budget does it. Each and every one of them, I would suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, probably have a lot less interaction with everyday Americans, but they have taken the time to put together that plan.

So there is a template. We are not asking a whole lot. It has been specific, laid out in the GAO report, simply to do that.

So we are asking very simply in the bill, do your job; and until you have done that job, which other agencies are very capable of doing, no bonuses get paid.

It doesn't say no bonuses get paid at all. In fact, this is not antiworker. In fact, hardworking people at the IRS--and there are many--they can get rewarded for appropriate work that they do. But don't pay those bonuses until you, management, answer to them why you won't do the service agreement or service plan. You tell your employees why you won't do it. Don't go blaming it on somebody else. That is the very simple request that we have, which is to make the plan before you write the bonuses.

Mr. Chairman, that is not asking for much. It is certainly not asking for much on behalf of the frustrated taxpayers of the United States who are seeing a demonstrated inability to communicate with the very agency that is responsible for helping them solve the questions that they have with respect to the complexities of the Tax Code.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to continuing to debate this issue.

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Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy).

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Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, let me take a moment just to be responsive to a couple of things.

In point of fact, I don't think that I could have had a better setup for the real issues here than the very arguments that have been made by my colleagues because, in fact, when you look behind what is actually going on, you see the scheme that is taking place here, which has put the IRS and the service that it gives to taxpayers right in the middle of the conflict.

What they have done is created a circumstance in which, if you purposely starve the very thing that will relate to the taxpayers, you can get the taxpayers worked up to come back to scream for more money for the Service: Let's blame this on Congress.

But let's talk about what is actually going on here, Mr. Chairman. There may have been budget cuts, as there have been budget cuts all across the government.

One of the budget cuts related to the $50 million that the IRS has used for conferences. And so, just like every other agency in government, just like the 14 percent cut we have taken in our own offices, there have been cuts at a time in which our government doesn't have money.

But that is not the issue. Because what has happened here has been the diverting of funding. What nobody is saying is that this same agency has been hit with $1.7 billion of diverted expenditure to service the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law that was pushed on us and pushed on all America; $1.7 billion has been diverted, will be dedicated this year, but never accounted for when that program was created.

They put this responsibility, another unfunded mandate put on the agency by this law. What they have done is divert the attention. Take the resources away and then use it as a way to compel to see if we can force Congress to get pulled into this debate.

Our thing is very, very simple. Again, it is not a funding issue. It is a service issue. We are not getting into that with this particular bill. It is a very simple thing that says: Create a plan for how you do it.

I am glad that the gentleman from New Jersey, who I respect enormously, has been able, Mr. Chair, to touch on the very point that was also made, this idea that somehow we have been unresponsive and starved this agency. Mr. Chairman, $290 million just sent purposely for this issue, $290 million.

So in addition to saying to give us a plan, we are saying: Here is $290 million of focused funding to say this is behind the plan. Tell us how you are going to use it.

This whole thing is a smokescreen on the part of the other side to create the tension when, in fact, we are asking for a very simple thing that we have already funded.

Mr. Chairman, I have no other speakers at this time.

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