WASHINGTON — The first Congressional hearing into the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny quickly turned into partisan jousting, with House Republicans pressing to expand the inquiry to other tax misdeeds closer to the White House, while Democrats tried to keep the focus narrow and under the purview of an I.R.S. chief appointed by President George W. Bush.
Steven T. Miller, the acting I.R.S. commissioner who has resigned, called the agency’s actions “obnoxious,” but told the House Ways and Means Committee they were not motivated by partisanship. And in testy exchanges, he said he had not misled Congress, even though he did not divulge the targeting efforts of a Cincinnati unit examining 70,000 applications for tax exemption.
He called the group’s centralization of applications from groups with names that included the words “Tea Party” or “patriots” simply “foolish mistakes” that “were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.”
With two additional hearings already scheduled for next week, it is clear the focus of Congressional inquires will extend well beyond the selection of 298 conservative groups for special scrutiny of their tax-exemption applications.
Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, pressed Mr. Miller and Russell George, the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, on the releasing of tax information on Koch Industries, the giant family business of conservative benefactors Charles and David Koch, by a former White House economist, Austan Goolsbee. He also hit on the publication of donor lists for the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex unions, and the release of confidential applications for tax-exempt status to the investigative reporting outfit Pro Publica.
But at least initially, Republican efforts to expand the inquiry did not get much traction. The incidents of releases of confidential tax information were referred to the inspector general for investigation, but were found to be inadvertent, the witnesses said.
As for Republican inquiries on whether the targeting of conservative groups was divulged to Obama administration officials outside the I.R.S., Mr. Miller said “that would be a violation of law.”
“I would be shocked” if that occurred, he said.
President Obama has tried to get on top of the scandal, condemning the program, vowing changes and requesting Mr. Miller’s resignation. But many Republicans have greeted each of these moves scornfully. Mr. Miller, as an acting I.R.S. chief, was likely to step down in June anyway, unless nominated for the permanent position.
Joseph Grant, commissioner of the I.R.S.'s tax-exempt and government-entities division, announced Thursday that he, too, would be leaving in the next month. But Republicans jumped on news Thursday evening that Mr. Grant’s predecessor, Sarah Hall Ingram, who led the division when the targeting operation began, is now in charge of the I.R.S. division overseeing implementation of parts of the president’s health care law.
Ms. Ingram’s name did not appear anywhere in the inspector general’s report of the program, nor had Republicans singled her out for criticism until now. But Republicans were eager to link the I.R.S. scandal with their opposition to the health care law.
“Stunning, just stunning,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.
According to the inspector general’s report, Mr. Miller was aware of the political targeting in March 2012, sending a team from I.R.S. headquarters in Washington to discuss it with the program’s leaders in Cincinnati. Yet a month later, Mr. Miller, then the deputy I.R.S. commissioner for enforcement, wrote a letter to Republican senators saying there was no targeting of conservative groups.
“There is a penalty for lying to Congress,” Mr. Boustany said.
The hearings will continue next week. On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will hold its hearing, and its Democratic chairman, Senator Max Baucus of Montana, hopes to question Douglas Shulman, a Bush administration appointee who was I.R.S. commissioner during most of the targeting program.
On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and its combative chairman, Representative Darrell Issa of California, will hold its first hearing on the matter, and will question Lois Lerner, an I.R.S. official who appears to have had knowledge of the program almost from its inception in 2010. Last Friday, when she apologized for I.R.S. conduct, she told reporters she learned of the program through news reports last year.
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and a member of the oversight committee, has already accused Ms. Lerner of lying to Congress.
“Our job is to, in an appropriate fashion at the right pace, pursue the truth,” Mr. Jordan said.
