Wyden Blasts Bisignano and Trump’s Corrupt and Incompetent Handling of IRS

Wyden Blasts Bisignano and Trump's Corrupt and Incompetent Handling of IRS

As Prepared for Delivery

It's April 15th, Tax Day. People all across the country have just gone through the headache of filing their taxes. Adding to the headache, millions of Americans are frustrated that Republicans and the Trump administration killed the Direct File program for this year and put them back at the mercy of the tax software giants who overcharge for a service that ought to be free.

It's a reminder that Trump operates just about every facet of our government the same basic, corrupt manner. To benefit himself and his friends. To punish people, he dislikes. And to degrade public service, no matter the cost to typical Americans. His administration's handling of the IRS is a perfect example of all three.

Direct File died on Mr. Bisignano's watch. Shutting it down was a big gift to the Republican-allied tax prep giants whose lobbying is relentless. These are companies whose rent-seeking business model is a multi-billion-dollar ripoff, year after year. Trump is on their side.

Acting in his own self-interest, Trump is suing the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion over the leak of his own tax returns that happened several years ago during his first term. During his second term, his administration is violating the exact same taxpayer privacy laws that underpin his lawsuit by illegally leaking tens of thousands of taxpayer records to ICE.

Hypocrisy isn't the only problem here. The conflict of interest for Trump's underlings at the Treasury Department, IRS and DOJ is enormous. The powerful and unstable guy they work for is suing the agencies they lead, and they're in charge of deciding whether the American taxpayer will be on the hook to pay up.

This is a depth of corruption that would have been unthinkable during the first 248 years of our history as a nation. Now it's routine stuff for Donald Trump.

On the IRS's data sharing agreement with ICE, I've been warning for a year that this would lead to serious mistakes and violations of taxpayer privacy laws. That's exactly what's come to pass.

There's a strong likelihood this system has misidentified taxpayers and sent ICE to hunt down innocent people who may now be sitting in concentration camps or worse. This is not an overstated danger. Countless families have had their lives ruined as a result of Trump's mass deportation campaign. Forty-six people have died in ICE custody since January 2025.

There are a lot of important reasons to protect taxpayer data. One key reason is that trust in our system is essential. If people believe filing taxes will lead to their abuse or detainment by the state, they will not comply. And noncompliance is a disaster -- it criminalizes people who would otherwise be on the right side of the law, and it drives up the deficit. Those may be the unspoken goals of this administration, as Donald Trump and Republicans seek to justify mass deportations and further cuts to essential priorities like health care and food stamps.

On the subject of degrading public service, there's little doubt that the numbers will show IRS customer service has worsened as a result of DOGE and Trump layoffs. The Trump administration's decision to phase out paper checks for tax refunds has caused real problems and delays for millions of vulnerable Americans who don't have bank accounts to take direct deposits. Anybody could have seen this situation coming, but the IRS didn't do the outreach needed to avoid it. Now a whole lot of Americans who count every spring on timely refunds to make ends meet are in trouble.

With filing season ending, I'm sure the Committee will hear some Trump administration spin about refunds. The reality is, their tax law is a dud for the vast majority of working people. Refunds aren't anywhere near the original Republican goal. Any benefit people are getting from the law is swamped by inflation resulting from tariffs and the war in Iran. The only people coming out on top are already super-wealthy. Trump economics are a loser for everybody else -- the most regressive economic policy any of us have ever seen.

I'll close on this. The Committee has held this filing season hearing many times. To my knowledge, this is the first time the witness has no real authority to talk about this subject because they don't actually have a Senate-confirmed role at the IRS or the Treasury. Mr. Bisignano is the so-called "Chief Executive Officer" of the IRS. I'll be blunt, this CEO job is fake. It's an end-run around the vetting process for a real nominee -- a way for Trump and Bessent to have direct control over the IRS.

As for Mr. Bisignano, his recent appearance before the Ways and Means Committee didn't do anything to convince anybody that the IRS is in good hands. Even the Republican side of the dais was unsatisfied. He has an actual job running Social Security -- another agency in crisis due to the Administration's incompetence and mismanagement. He ought to be focused on cleaning up that mess.

Over the past 15 months, this administration laid off more than 7,500 SSA employees, worsened Americans' access to their earned benefits and gave DOGE free rein to pilfer through their most sensitive data. Just a few weeks ago, we learned that a former DOGE staffer downloaded onto a personal thumb drive a copy of one of Social Security's tightly restricted databases of Americans' personal information.

My colleagues and I have repeatedly urged the chairman to hold a hearing to dig into these important issues. Republicans have instead decided to stick their heads in the sand. This is Mr. Bisignano's first appearance before this committee since his confirmation last May, and it's not even focused on the agency he was nominated to lead. I find every bit of this unacceptable.

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