IRS ABUSES UNDERSCORE NEED TO CHANGE

Hearings conducted last month before the U.S. Senate's Finance Committee spotlighted appalling abuses of power by the Internal Revenue Service. These abuses seem to have become business-as-usual for the agency, with some IRS employees testifying behind screens, their voices electronically altered as is done with mob informers fearful of retribution.

These hearings were an important public service. They should be expanded and taken on the road around the country. It has been a long time since any congressional hearings have so captured the public imagination.

In the wake of this congressional show, Republican leaders pledged to make overhauling the IRS a major cause over the next three years. If they really mean this, they are on to an issue that will resonate with the American people in the elections of 1998 and 2000. This is all the more true if President Clinton and his treasury secretary really intend to defend the IRS, as they did last week. "I believe the IRS is functioning better today than it was five years ago," said the president rather blandly.

More than lip service will be needed from congressional leaders, however, and not all the early portents are good. First, there was talk about a new oversight board, composed of private business executives and someone from Treasury, to ride herd on the agency. This is small beer indeed, when the goal must be much more fundamental reform. A self-confident Republican Party leadership would seize this issue as the golden opportunity it is: To abolish the current IRS code and replace it with something vastly simpler, fairer and less intrusive. Fiddling around with some oversight board won't do.

What we need is for the congressional GOP to build on these hearings and on the drive launched by the National Federation of Independent Business to scrap the current tax code altogether. In this regard, the bill co-sponsored by Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Springfield, is a praiseworthy move. It would sunset the entire IRS code effective Dec. 31, 2000.

Congress must seize the chance ditch the current code and move us toward a flat income tax or national sales tax. This won't be easy, but it is a grand cause worthy of a great party. Anything less, and we might as well go back to business as usual, before the GOP won their congressional majority in 1994.