STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 18 June 2013

[Demeter]

15. Tom Udall to head IRS spending panel

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/tom-udall-irs-spending-panel-92754.html

New Mexico Democratic Sen. Tom Udall will take over the appropriations panel with jurisdiction over the Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Udall replaces the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.).

The new position gives Udall the power of the purse over the embattled IRS. Before the agency’s announcement last month that it targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, IRS senior leadership had appealed to the subcommittee for additional funding for enforcement and taxpayer service programs.

The agency’s spending habits have come under scrutiny in the wake of an inspector general report which found that the agency spent about $50 million on a series of conferences from 2010 to 2012. Republicans are openly distrustful of the agency and have used the extra review given to conservative organizations as an example of mismanagement within a massive organization whose budget should be more closely examined. Congress has cut the IRS’s budget by $1 billion since 2010, including more than $600 million from sequestration.