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Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate will vote on whether to put somebody who is up to their eyeballs in tax scams, corruption, and coverups in charge of the IRS. This ought to be an easy no.

It is one corruption bombshell after another with former Congressman Billy Long--fake tax credits, scam tax advice, shadowy political donations that went straight into his pocket, promises of personal favors, and no-show jobs with high-paying Federal salaries.

Yesterday came the latest revelation. My Finance Committee staff investigators determined that Long appears to be implicated in a major bribery scheme in his old congressional district. The scandal unfolded while he was in office.

Twelve people in Missouri and Arkansas pled guilty or went to jail when these crimes were prosecuted. It was a criminal case the size of the Ozarks.

Court documents identified him in one guilty plea as ``U.S. Representative #1.'' That is the guilty plea of a man named Donald Andrew Jones, D.A. Jones. Jones's prosecution involved kickbacks and other illicit payments, a network of executives, and the misuse of charity funds in Springfield, MO, his hometown. The Justice Department's summary of the case describes ``payments routed through different business entities or lobbying firms'' as well as D.A. Jones's ``advocacy services, including direct contact with elected and appointed public officials.''

The guilty plea describes multiple communications in which Jones said he interacted with Billy Long, ``U.S. Representative #1.'' It includes discussions of services performed by Long's office. It includes descriptions of interactions with Long's top adviser. It includes Jones directing political donations and offering to hand-deliver a check to Billy Long to guarantee he was immediately aware of the money's source.

For his role in this bribery scheme, Jones got a prison sentence of a year and a day behind bars.

The Finance Committee held Billy Long's nomination hearing a few weeks ago. I asked several questions in writing about this matter that were informed by certain reports brought to my investigations team. I laid out the names of all the characters and organizations involved in this massive bribery scandal.

I asked the former Congressman whether he or his campaign received payments from anybody involved. I asked whether he was an unindicted coconspirator in a Federal criminal case involving any of them. I asked whether he was ever interviewed by Federal prosecutors or law enforcement agents in relation to this criminal investigation. I asked if he ever acknowledged to the Department of Justice that he received bribes from individuals involved or if he struck any kind of cooperation agreement to avoid prosecution. I asked whether his decision to leave Congress in any way related to his involvement in this investigation or a condition to avoid prosecution.

Here is the answer:

``I had nothing to do with any of this and I do not know any of these people or organizations.''

Colleagues, this is just impossible to believe. We are talking about a major bribery scandal that unfolded in Billy Long's hometown--not even on the other side of the district. He is implicated in a guilty plea as ``U.S. Representative #1.'' The idea that he doesn't know anybody involved is just absurd.

I am convinced, colleagues, there is more to this story. Senators ought to ask themselves whether they want to be on the record supporting this nomination when the rest of it comes to light.

In my view, this nomination should never have come to the Senate floor. Billy Long never did any serious legislating on tax issues. He has no experience in tax policy. What he does have is experience in tax fraud.

He left office in 2023 after an unsuccessful Senate campaign. He went straight into the tax fraud industry. He teamed up with a bunch of sketchy operators selling tax deals that were sleazy at best. He got paid to promote fake Tribal tax credits by a firm called White River Energy. Neither Long nor White River can tell us what Tribe they acquired these so-called tax credits from.

The IRS confirmed to my staff that the credits were fake. They said that the promoters of them could face prosecution.

The same day a Bloomberg News article exposed this scheme, December 19--just a few days after Donald Trump announced Long's nomination--the CFO of the company got on a call with investors and told them they would soon have friends at the IRS to clean up their mess. My investigators obtained the audio. We have it on tape.

Not long thereafter, White River executives started cutting checks to Long's failed Senate campaign that had ended years before. Between their donations and others that poured in after his nomination went public, Billy Long was able to stuff $130,000 into his own pockets by repaying his personal campaign loans.

Now he has refused to answer any questions about this scheme and his role in it.

If that is not enough reason to oppose this nominee, let me talk briefly about the employee retention tax credit. This was a small business rescue program Congress created during the depths of the pandemic. But after it expired, the scamsters came in, and they turned it into a firehose of fraud.

Billy Long must have seen an opportunity, and he used his credibility as a former Congressman to sling these tax credits to anybody who would listen. We have him on tape saying that ``everybody qualifies'' for the ERTC. That is a lie. He bragged about getting money for a funeral home even though the pandemic was a boom time for that kind of business due to the number of Americans dying of COVID-19.

Finance Committee investigators obtained another recording, this time of an executive at a firm called Appreciation Financial that sold the scam-ridden tax credits. He said he made the Congressman his guest to the inauguration earlier this year. He said they had dinner and spent a few nights together. His exact quote on the subject of IRS enforcement around employee retention credits is this:

``We could be worried about promoter audits now but we don't have to worry about any of that now with Billy coming in.''

I asked Long about this at his nomination hearing in written questions, whether he knew this executive and what he promised him. There was no real answer either time.

Now, colleagues, I will say it again. That ought to be enough to vote down this nomination, but if you want more scandal, let's talk about no-show jobs at the Office of Personnel Management.

Back in March, Mr. Long was made a senior advisor to the Director of OPM. Our staff asked Mr. Long in a due diligence meeting what his responsibilities were there. He picked up a recent OPM press release, read it word for word, and then said he worked on it. When asked for additional detail or more examples of his duties, he mumbled a few things about retirement and proofreading--no other information. Now, the Congressman is a talkative guy. His brevity on this subject speaks for itself.

After that meeting, Finance Committee investigators obtained copies of internal OPM work calendars belonging to Billy Long and three persons who were hired with him. They were nearly blank--a scant meeting here and there; no evidence of legitimate work being performed.

An investigative reporter for the Talking Points Memo dug into the matter. Neither Billy Long nor OPM would provide any real answers either.

It sure looks to me like the former Congressman got high-paying, no- show jobs for himself and three others. If they were doing real work, they would have told us what they were doing. They have nothing to lose if everything is on the level.

Somebody who ripped off the taxpayer by accepting a no-show job on a maxed-out salary cannot be trusted to run the IRS. Colleagues, it is that simple.

And let's remember, this was going on just as the Trump-Musk-DOGE crowd were first breaking into OPM with the goal of terrorizing public servants and triggering mass layoffs.

So I close with just one question: How can the Senate possibly-- possibly--put this individual in charge of our tax system?

The reality is that this is all about fairness.

It wouldn't be all that difficult for the Trump administration to go back and find a tax expert or somebody with lots of management experience to run this vital Agency. We had great working relationships with the first Trump IRS Commissioner, Chuck Rettig. This is not about whether you have an ``R'' or a ``D'' next to your name. There are serious issues to deal with when it comes to the Tax Code--protecting taxpayer data, building on our improvements in taxpayer service.

The Trump administration is signaling that the wealthy have a green light to commit tax fraud, and that is outrageous, with huge implications and consequences for years to come.

The bottom line is, fairness matters at the IRS. Independence matters at the IRS. Ethics and honesty matter at the IRS. The American people aren't going to get any of that--none--from Billy Long. He is surrounded, in my view, by a cloud of corruption, and we ought to keep that away from the IRS at all costs.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose the Long nomination that we will vote on in a few minutes.

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