Connecticut’s Democratic senators say President Trump and Elon Musk have turned the steal sign “on” for wealthy tax evaders by hollowing out the staff at the Internal Revenue Service. Meantime, current and fired IRS workers say the mass layoffs, and the plan for more, have left them demoralized.
“By telegraphing that Donald Trump is taking the cops off the beat,” says Sen. Chris Murphy, “it is an invitation for the very wealthy and for the corporations to try to get away with tax cheating.”
After firing seven thousand IRS workers in the opening weeks of the Trump Administration, Trump and Musk have more drastic plans: to fire 50 percent of the ninety-thousand member IRS staff. The senators say the layoffs will hinder the ability of the IRS to collect taxes from those trying to evade them.
“That is a gift to the grifters, like Elon Musk, who are already benefitting from loopholes and avoidance and evasion,” says Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
Former President Biden had built staffing levels at the IRS, allowing the agency to recover $1.3 billion from tax cheats, according to Blumenthal’s office. Now, the IRS is one of many agencies being targeted by Musk and Trump in their effort to unilaterally, and some say illegally, slash trillions in Congressionally-approved spending.
The senators are also concerned about the quality continuation of IRS services for average Americans, especially during tax season. They say the processing of returns and refunds could be significantly delayed due to a lack of personnel.
Blumenthal is one of sixteen senators asking Acting Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Heather Hill to investigate the IRS firings. They want her to determine if the layoffs, and the closure of multiple facilities, undermine the agency’s mission.
As one of the IRS workers fired in the purge, Marine veteran Gabe D’Alatri of Vernon says in their rush to slash payrolls, the Trump Administration is being disrespectful of veterans, who make up about 30 percent of the federal workforce. At a press conference in Hartford with the senators, D’Alatri issued a message to Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, an avid cost-cutter who has spoken favorably of putting federal employees “in trauma.”
“You want to traumatize the federal workforce that’s one-third… veterans?” asked D’Alatri of Vought. “These are guys that fought in the battle of Fallujah, Baghdad and you want to traumatize these people that are already traumatized? I’m not okay with that and I don’t think anybody else should be. These are people that have sacrificed and put forth their livelihood for the country.”
The workers who remain at the IRS are getting the job done to the best of their abilities, according to a union leader and longtime IRS employee who says her members are demoralized:
“I open the union door to them every single day,” says Donna Roberts, president of the National Treasury Employees Union’s Hartford chapter, “and I say to them, ‘Please, come to work, do your job to the best of your ability, and that’s all we can ask for.’”
“And the one thing that I ask is this (Trump’s) administration treat all federal employees with dignity, courtesy and respect. We deserve that. We do not deserve to be treated (as) less than dirt.”