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December 16th, 2024 Len’s Political Note #692 Oppose Billy Long for IRS Commissioner
2025 Trump Nominees
“Don’t trust anyone over thirty.”
I remember that warning. During the Sixties, those of us who were young thought that a government corrupt enough and stupid enough to get us into a meaningless war, the butcher-shop of a war in Vietnam should have been replaced by something else.
I was a young man in the Sixties. Donald Trump was too. Here is some of what Donald Trump learned from the Sixties. Sex was there for the taking. There was no reason for him to go to war. American institutions were corrupt and meaningless.
Through the Hollywood Access tapes and through his liability loss to E. Jean Carroll, we have seen what happened to Donald Trump’s understanding that sex is there for the taking. Through Trump’s trial for falsifying business records, we have seen that sometimes Donald Trump has to pay for the sex he thought was there for the taking.
Through his acquiescence to Vladimir Putin, through his refusal to get his hair wet by avoiding a visit to a World War II cemetery, through his disinterest in the overthrow of Assad we see Donald Trump’s discomfort with a confrontation he does not control, let alone his discomfort with war. As Barack Obama famously said about himself, he was opposed to stupid wars. If Obama were asked now, he might make a list of America’s recent stupid wars – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan after the first punishing strikes in retaliation to their support of Al Queda and their attack on 9/11. Trump would put the Ukraine-Russia war on that list, a war that we are supporting not fighting.
Through his nominees for the Cabinet and other high offices, we see Donald Trump’s disdain for American institutions. We see he is willing to destroy some of them.
Consider some of the most irresponsible nominations:
- Matt Gaetz, an accused pedophile, for Attorney General.
- Pete Hegseth, accused of drunkenness, financial mismanagement, and assault of women for Secretary of Defense. (Hegseth has promised not to drink if he is confirmed for the job.) See Len’s Political Note #687
- Tulsi Gabbard, whose views of international issues appear to be most consistent with the pro-Russia views of Vladimir Putin and the anti-Muslim views of Narendra Modi. See Len’s Political Note #688
- Linda McMahon, who seems perfectly willing to join in the effort to destroy the Department of Education and, perhaps, if the opportunity arises, American public education while she is at it. See Len’s Political Note #689
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr, whose obsessions create a likelihood that he would destroy the Department of Health and Human Services, doing harm to America’s health and its human services along the way. See Len’s Political Note #690
- Kash Patel, who promises to turn the FBI into an instrument of vengeance rather than its appropriate role of law enforcement. See Len’s Political Note #691
Donald Trump has nominated Billy Long to be Director of the Internal Revenue Service. As with the FBI, Trump would oust a sitting Director with an entirely inappropriate replacement, a replacement willing to misuse his agency.
Billy Long was born in Springfield, Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri in Columbia, joined a fraternity, and dropped out of school. He found his calling, though. After a nine-day training, he became a Certified Auctioneer. He appears to have played in enough poker tournaments to qualify, art least, as a semi-professional. He worked in talk radio for a while as well.
It is the auctioneering through which he earned his money. Having been in Congress from his 2010 election to his Senate primary loss in 2022, he demonstrated his auctioneering skills in 2018. The Energy and Commerce committee was interrupted by the right-wing blogger Laura Loomer. Billy Long stepped in. He began an auctioneer’s chant, pretending to sell off Laura Loomer’s cell phone while she was being escorted out of the room. It is hard to feel sympathy for Laura Loomer, but it is equally hard to avoid seeing a little misogyny in Billy Long’s performance.
Billy Long has gone to extremes on the issue of the income tax, which the Internal Revenue Service collects. His first tax proposal was to repeal the 16th amendment to the United States Constitution which authorizes an income tax.
No one changed the constitution for Billy Long. Several times, however, he submitted another extreme proposal to congress. Abolish the individual and the corporate income tax. Replace the income tax with a sales tax. The Tax Policy Center explains that to raise the money lost from income tax abolition, the United States would need to have a 23% to 30% sales tax.
Republicans rarely turn to Europe for ideas, but Billy Long might explain that the European VAT Directives lead to a tax rate of 15% and most Europeans pay higher income taxes than we do besides. Billy Long’s proposal is disturbingly unfair. The top .1% earners would save about $2 million annually if the country shifts to a sales tax. Middle income people would pay nearly $6,000 per year more in taxes than they do now.
Billy Long was not quite finished when he repeatedly made his income tax/sales tax proposal. He also proposed we eliminate the inheritance tax (which he and other Republicans call the death tax). Very few of us are subject to this tax. Only estates that include more than $13.6 million pay the inheritance tax and then only on the portion of the estate that exceeds $13.6 million. It is tough to argue that you are attempting to do something for middle income people when the tax you are trying to abolish targets people who have accumulated more than $13 million over the course of their lives.
Since the pandemic, after losing a US Senate run in the primary, Billy Long became a tax consultant – peddling ways to fiddle the Employee Retention Tax Credit. The Retention Tax Credit was a good idea. Companies that did not lay off their workers during the pandemic got a credit to help them with the payroll they were supporting.
The tax credit was, however, a magnet for fraudsters. There were, apparently, lots of ways for companies to pretend they did not layoff people. Did Billy Long help fraudsters? He says he absolutely did not. Somebody helped them. The tax credit program went from costing us $55 billion to $230 billion. When the IRS put a stop to it, the tax credit was projected to cost $550 billion.
The contrast between Billy Long and the commissioner Trump would oust is huge. Dan Werfel, whose term would ordinarily extend into 2027 used some of the additional funds Congress has voted the agency to make a difference in what the IRS collects. During the summer of 2024, the IRS reported collecting millions in past-due taxes – all from people earning $1million per year or more.
Under Werfel, the IRS has also been a powerful agency for dealing with criminals. In October of this year, in the Washington Post, Gwendolyn Brooks celebrated an IRS staffer, Jared Koopman who led an investigation that “led to the rescue of 23 children from rape and assault, the seizure of a quarter-million child abuse videos, and the arrest of 370 alleged pedophiles. It has resulted in the largest-ever seizure of cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency that was headed to Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. When Changpeng Zhao, chief of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, reported to prison in June, it was because Koopman’s small cybercrime team had uncovered evidence of the firm’s money laundering for terrorists and sanctions-busting for Iran, Syria and Russia. This kind of work has returned more than $12 billion to victims of crime and to the U.S. Treasury” in recent years.
If Billy Long is not confirmed, Trump will probably name someone else who won’t enforce our tax laws. Len’s focus on Long. Contact your Senators. Urge them to oppose confirming Billy Long as IRS Commissioner.
The Senate Committee on Finance will review this nomination. I don’t know who will Chair the committee. John Thune of South Dakota was the Ranking Member in the current Congress. In January, he will be Majority Leader. Call him anyway (202 224 2321).
Other Republicans (remember we need four Republicans to reject a nomination to avoid confirmation) currently on the Finance committee are:
Chuck Grassley of Iowa. (202-224-6020)
John Cornyn of Texas (202-224-2934)
James Lankford of Oklahoma. (202-224-5754)
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin (202-224-5323)
Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee (202-224-3344)
Mike Crapo of Idaho. (202-224-6142)
Contact Democrats as well. We need unanimous opposition among them.
Michael Bennet of Colorado. (202-224-5852)
Mark Warner of Virginia. (202-224-2023)
Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. (202-224-2921)
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. (202-224-4543)
Ron Wyden of Oregon. (202-224-5244)
Make these calls. Make a difference.
