Hearings to investigate an ever broadening scandal within the Internal Revenue Service will continue on Monday when the new head of the IRS faces the House for the first time. In addition to questions regarding the targeting of conservative political groups applying for tax exempt status Danny Werfel is expected to be asked about a soon to be released report that the IRS spent lavishly on conferences for its employees, according to Fox News.
The report was conducted by the Treasury Department's inspector general and is expected to be released on Tuesday. It reveals that the IRS spent about $50 million on conferences for their employees during the span of 2010-2012. At least 220 conferences were held within the three year period, according to the Associated Press.
The IRS issued a statement saying that the administration "has already taken aggressive and dramatic action to reduce conference spending," in wake of the report.
An August 2010 conference held in Anaheim, Calif., at a cost of $4 million was the focus of the report. The IRS broke government policy by failing to negotiate lower hotel rates for the 2,600 attendees. In addition, attendees were given gifts including baseball tickets and some attendees were upgraded to presidential suites for prices ranging from $1,500 to $3,500 per night, according to a statement issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Michelle Eldridge, an IRS spokeswoman, told the Associated Press that spending on large conferences was drastically cut from $37.6 million in 2010 to $4.9 million in 2012.
"This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era," Werfel said in a statement Friday. "While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and shouldn't have occurred."
A House hearing has been scheduled for Thursday that will focus on the conference spending. Today Werfel will be expected to hear questions involving reports that an IRS field agent claims the targeting of conservative groups was ordered from Washington, not from a few rogue agents in Cincinnati as the Obama administration has argued, according to transcripts released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The Cincinnati based field agent told Congressional investigators that a supervisor told he or she to search for Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status to investigate because "Washington D.C. wanted some cases," according to Fox News.
The unnamed agent also told Congressional investigators that it would have been impossible for one or two rogue agents to be responsible for the entire scandal.
"It's impossible. As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen," the agent said.
The House hearings begin at 3:00 pm EST and can be seen here.
