Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio is calling on the acting head of the IRS to resign over revelations the agency unfairly targeted Tea Party groups.
Tea Party activists across Florida are up in arms over the Inspector General’s report that accuses the IRS of using inappropriate criteria to assess conservative groups. Steven Miller is currently the acting IRS commissioner. He was a deputy commissioner during the 18 months the IRS targeted conservative groups, which Senator Rubio says is enough to implicate him.“It’s clear now that the information was available to the higher-ups at the IRS for months before they’ve disclosed it to the public. Second, he was overseeing divisions that had something to do with it", said Rubio. "There’s information now available that he was aware of this occurring months earlier.”
Miller says he’s now identified two “rogue” agents who spearheaded the targeting of conservative groups. But Rubio says Miller and other officials were derelict of duty for not being forthright with lawmakers.
“In any organization where there’s a systemic failure as what we’ve had here now, including an organization that was deliberately misleading members of the Senate when they were being asked direct questions about whether the IRS was doing that, he was in charge of it at the time when they were still answering that no such thing was happening", Rubio said. "So he should be held accountable for that.”
Rubio was catapulted into the Senate with strong backing from the Tea Party. So far only one Democrat has joined him and other Republicans in calling for Miller to step down.