How a fight with Rick Santorum made an IRS Commissioner

[DonViejo]

Here’s the little-told story of how Doug Shulman, who led the IRS when targeting occurred, unexpectedly got the job

BY IKE BRANNON

While President Obama fired IRS commissioner Steven Miller this week for failing to stop the enhanced scrutiny the IRS gave 501c4 applications with conservative missions, most of the activity happened under a man who was never supposed to get the job: Miller’s predecessor, Doug Shulman. Indeed, the little known story of how Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007 stems from an unfortunate incident that derailed his party’s first choice for the spot.

One thing to keep in mind is that the president and his staff have literally thousands of posts to fill. A White House that doesn’t want to get bogged down will defer many of these lower-level appointments to politicians in his party who have some special interest or expertise in a position. The IRS commissioner is usually seen as a low-level position, since he merely enforces the law and has no ability to actually make law.

When it came to replacing the retiring IRS commissioner in 2007 Senator Charles Grassley, Ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, offered up one of his senior staffers on the Committee by the name of Dean Zerbe.

The president’s people had no real objection to the choice: Zerbe had been on the committee for a long time and he was considered a tax code savant as well as a shrewd lawyer, albeit one with sharp elbows. But the elbows hit the ribs of people on both sides of the aisle, because Zerbe was very aggressive (at his boss’s behest) at rooting out tax dodges and finding ways to raise revenue without increasing taxes.

But Zerbe lost his viability for the post when his aggressiveness flared into a shouting match with a U.S. Senator.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/how_a_fight_with_rick_santorum_made_an_irs_commissioner/

[libodem]

1. Hmmm?

Go figure.