{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.enzi.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=34b6fa4b-6499-48e6-9aef-5a7013fda306", "IRS botched payments cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars", "2014-12-10", "2014", "2014-12", "Republican", "House", "WY", "Michael Enzi", "E000285", "www.enzi.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "The IRS has improperly paid out more than $20 billion in tax credits, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report released Tuesday.\r\n\u201cTwenty billion dollars would pay a lot of military salaries.\u00a0 It would build a few miles of road, fix some bridges or help better maintain some of our national parks.\u00a0 It could even go toward our massive debt, but instead the IRS continues to blunder its way forward,\u201d U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said.\u00a0 \u201cNot only is the IRS not able to manage the tax credit payment programs it is responsible for now, but the Administration is doubling and tripling down through Obamacare and executive amnesty.\u00a0 The IRS will now be responsible for evaluating the eligibility of millions and millions more people. \u00a0\u00a0These are massive wealth redistribution programs and they are being mismanaged.\u201d\r\nThe Treasury inspector report said an estimated 24 percent of all Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) payments made in Fiscal Year 2013, or $14.5 billion, were paid in error.\u00a0 The treasury inspector report also estimated that potential improper payments for Fiscal Year 2013 for the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) totaled between $5.9 billion and $7.1 billion, a potential improper payment rate between 25.2 percent and 30.5 percent.\r\nThe IRS disagreed with the bulk of Treasury inspector\u2019s recommendations for reducing the risk of improper payments, according to the report.\r\n\u201cWhile the IRS has developed processes to identify improper EITC payments and their root causes, it has not developed processes to quantify or identify the root causes of improper ACTC payments,\u201d according to the report.\u00a0\r\nEnzi, Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, said he\u2019s eager for the new Congress to begin.\r\n\u201cThis is what happens when a Senate majority shirks its oversight responsibilities.\u00a0 We get bad programs being run badly,\u201d Enzi said.\u00a0 \u201cWe need to look at tax credit eligibility from top to bottom and we need to audit the auditor.\u00a0 The IRS must be held accountable.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.enzi.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=34b6fa4b-6499-48e6-9aef-5a7013fda306"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.2172050774097443, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}