President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next IRS commissioner, former Missouri GOP Rep. Billy Long, faces continued delay over apparent unfinished background paperwork that’s creating mixed messages between the White House and Capitol Hill.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) told the Washington Examiner he’s unsure when the paperwork with various federal agencies would conclude so his panel could advance Long but indicated it was part of the bureaucratic delay that nominees and committees regularly face under new administrations.
The White House suggested Crapo’s committee was facing a backlog of nominees, including Long.
Nevertheless, the inability to proceed comes amid tax-filing season for most Americans and the firing of more than 6,000 probationary IRS workers as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal workforce pushed by billionaire ally Elon Musk and DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency.
“The IRS can function very well and will deal with the tax season,” Crapo said. “I think it would be better if we got him done sooner than later.”
Presidential nominees go through a vigorous vetting process that includes, among other things, a background check, ethics review for potential conflicts of interest, and an agreement with the Office of Government Ethics. The White House and Senate prioritized Trump’s Cabinet confirmations in the first month of his second term and have only recently set their sights on lower-level nominees now that his Cabinet is nearly filled.
The Senate confirmed Scott Bessent last month to lead the Department of Treasury, which oversees the IRS.
Crapo believed Long’s paperwork was not yet to the ethics office, suggesting they would not be able to proceed with Long in the immediate future. A search of the office’s database showed no publicly available paperwork for Long.
“It’s just very simple: the paperwork is not finished,” Crapo added. “That is not because of some specific reason that I’m aware of.”
White House officials declined to answer questions regarding Long’s representative team and told the Washington Examiner to route any inquiries about his nomination directly through the press office.
A White House official said Crapo’s Finance Committee “is in the process of considering a few nominees.” The committee has several other Trump nominees under its jurisdiction who are awaiting approval but do not have any scheduled hearings or meetings on its calendar for the next few weeks. The nominee it considered most recently, Jamieson Greer to be U.S. trade representative, was advanced by the Senate during a procedural floor vote Monday evening.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement that “just like all of President Trump’s highly-qualified nominees, Billy Long will be swiftly considered before the Senate and confirmed.”
Long could not be reached for comment.
Former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, appointed by former President Joe Biden, was confirmed in 2023 to a term that lasts until November 2027. He resigned on Trump’s first day back in office.
Long, a congressman from 2011-2023 and a former auctioneer, has not yet had a confirmation hearing before the Finance Committee but is likely to face widespread opposition from Democrats. He’s closely aligned with Trump and has supported bills that would abolish the IRS and replace the tax-collecting agency with a national sales tax. Trump has recently suggested the IRS should be abolished and replaced with tariff revenues.
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Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the Finance Committee’s ranking member, was also unaware of specifics regarding Long’s paperwork snafu.
“The question is, how did the bureaucracy not take other [nominees] to the sidelines?” Wyden said.
Christian Datoc contributed to this report.