Clinton, GOP at Odds Over Plans to Slash 15% From IRS Budget

Championing the Internal Revenue Service may not be at the top of President Clinton’s agenda as he campaigns for reelection while his opponents regularly vilify the impact of “big government” on tax-weary voters.

Yet today, as the House debates a Republican-sponsored spending bill that cuts back the maligned agency, the White House finds itself precisely in that spot.

On one level, the debate will center on proposed cuts in a controversial program to modernize the IRS’ creaky old computers that critics have blasted as a multibillion-dollar fiasco.

Yet on another level, this is a fiercely ideological dispute over the future of a powerful agency that embodies the federal reach into the lives of Americans. GOP critics of the IRS are trying to slash the president’s request for the agency by 15%, eliminate thousands of jobs and, in the process, strike a blow against what they see as wasteful government.

Arrayed on the other side are those who argue that ravaging the agency would have the perverse effect of making it less effective and more unfair.

“Deep cuts to the IRS may do grave damage to our ability to collect revenue, enforce the tax laws and continue to provide the services that taxpayers have a right to expect,” Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin cautioned.

The bill, part of the annual appropriation for the Treasury Department, would provide $6.75 billion to the IRS for fiscal 1997, a 15% cut from Clinton’s request of $7.99 billion and a sharp reduction even from last year’s $7.35 billion. But by some estimates, the IRS would lose as many as 7,000 of its 106,000 employees.

In resisting the proposals, the Clinton administration has hinted at a veto and warned that the budget cuts would have serious consequences, including lost revenue.