Long goodbye

Less than two months into his stint as commissioner of the IRS, Billy Long is out and heading to Iceland as its new ambassador (assuming the Senate confirms him, as it does virtually all of Trump’s appointments). Given that he was totally unqualified for the job, that seems like a good sign to me.

Here’s an excerpt from the NY Times article that broke the story:

Billy Long, the former auctioneer and Republican congressman who was confirmed less than two months ago as head of the Internal Revenue Service, has been abruptly removed from the post by President Trump, the administration disclosed on Friday.

Mr. Long, who had little background in tax policy beyond promoting a fraud-riddled tax credit, had clashed at times with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during his brief tenure, three people familiar with the decision said. He also made high-profile mistakes, at one point last month telling tax practitioners that the agency’s all-important filing season would start late next year, a statement that the I.R.S. later said was premature.

A gregarious and colorful personality, Mr. Long had tried to cultivate a connection with the depleted and demoralized I.R.S. work force. He visited I.R.S. locations around the country and repeatedly sent emails to all I.R.S. employees allowing them to leave work early on Friday afternoons.

“With this being Thursday before another FriYay, please enjoy a 70-minute early exit tomorrow. That way you’ll be rested for my 70th birthday on Monday!” Mr. Long wrote to staff on Thursday.

I suspect that somebody in the administration realized that with the depletion of the agency’s staff and the challenge of implementing the myriad tax changes under OBBBA, having someone competent in charge was critical. Trying to cultivate employee morale by giving blanket time off, when the agency is facing massive and critical workload is not a good look.

A disastrous (or just bad) 2026 filing season, major glitches in implementing OBBBA, or similar would all be bad heading into the midterms, to state the politically obvious.

He was on a very short lease, according to the story, which reports that Long told colleagues he needed Treasury Secretary Bessent’s approval for “everything he did at the I.R.S. * * *.”

I take this as a good sign. But that’s like celebrating that you can salvage the toy after spilling the contents of your box of Cracker Jacks on the dirty floor. The administration has done nearly everything possible to wreck the agency. Cashiering an incompetent leader is a baby step forward. I’ll withhold my judgment until they nominate a replacement and enact a budget for the agency. It may be that the submarine’s dive has leveled off but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

Former commissioner Koskinen had a nice quote, understated but capturing the reality, in the Times story:

“It has to be a new American record for the shortest I.R.S. tenure [for a Senate-confirmed commissioner] in history,” he said. “Obviously, he had no background in tax and no background in management. You give him a 75,000-person agency in charge of the tax code, and it is a bit of a challenge.”