Democrat Elijah Cummings: Lois Lerner Should Lose Her Job

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday he believes Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s Director of the Exempt Organizations division, should lose her job over her participation in the agency’s targeting of conservative organizations.

“I think that if [Steve] Miller had to lose his job, and I don’t think he should be the lone person to go–if she was one of the originators of this targeting process, then I don’t think she should be there,” he said.

I think what the American people want is that they need to know, that if someone has done something wrong, that they have apologized for it by the way. In this instance, it is more important that we restore trust. If it’s a violation of civil service rules, you got to stay within those rules. I think that you can allow her to go without pay. In other words, take her out of the office and giver her pay, rather. But, I think she has to go, because we have to restore trust.

The Washington Post gave four Pinocchios to Lerner, pointing to her “seemingly impromptu apology at an American Bar Association panel” and the Treasury Inspector General report. It was later found out her apology resulted from a planted question in the audience.

Cummings told reporters he thinks the IRS scandal is an important issue for his committee to look into:

I think it’s a very sensitive issue for the American people. The IRS is the organization that every family comes in contact with. Every family fears audits. Every family wants to be treated fairly. So if there are allegations that something went wrong, and here we have a situation where Miss Lerner actually said that—apologized for them doing something wrong, it calls out for a number of things.

It calls out for us to look at it and investigate it and number two, it calls for us to do it in a bipartisan way. And number three, It calls for us to take the information we find and make the necessary reforms, so that we can restore trust.