WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Washington’s top tax official was fired yesterday as Presi-dent Barack Obama sought to stem a rising tide of criticism in a scandal over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny.
Seeking to regain the initiative amid a series of controversies that have threatened his second-term agenda, Obama said new leadership was needed to restore public confidence in the IRS, whose reputation for political independence has suffered a major blow.
With congressional investigations looming, Obama said he had told Treasury Secre-tary Jack Lew to seek the resignation of Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner, and Lew had done so.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards,” Obama told reporters in the White House’s ornate East Room.
The IRS revelations have added to a sense of a White House under siege and a president struggling to gain control of fast-moving events.
Republicans continue to bash the administration’s handling of the attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. And on Monday, the Justice Department came under fire for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a criminal probe into intelligence leaks.
Obama spoke after meeting with senior Treasury officials on ways to quell the growing uproar after a government watchdog described how poor management led to an “inappropriate” focus on claims by conservative groups for tax-exempt status.
The Democratic president, who had been accused by Republican critics of reacting too passively to the scandal, called the misconduct “inexcusable.”
“Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” he said. “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives.”
He promised to work “hand in hand” with Congress to fix the problem but, acknowledging the realities of a divided Washington, urged lawmakers to deal with the delicate issue in a way that does not “smack of politics or partisan agendas.”
Obama’s announcement followed stepped-up calls from Republican lawmakers for Miller, who was aware in 2012 of the agency’s efforts to single out conservative groups as a deputy IRS commissioner, and other top IRS officials to step down.
Republicans made clear they intended to keep up the pressure on the Obama administration.
“More than two years after the problem began, and a year after the IRS told us there was no problem, the president is beginning to take action,” Senate Republican Minority leader Mitch McConnell said.
“If the president is as concerned about this issue as he claims, he’ll work openly and transparently with Congress to get to the bottom of the scandal – no stonewalling, no half-answers, no withholding of witnesses,” he said.
