IRS Faces Gingrich's Budget Ax -- Speaker Adds Tax Man To List Of Possible Cuts

WASHINGTON - First it was Big Bird, now it's the tax man. Add the Internal Revenue Service to the list of government agencies Newt Gingrich would abolish or replace.

"Kick the IRS out of your wallet and out of your records," the House Speaker said Saturday. "Get back to an America free from the IRS, in terms of day-to-day micromanagement."

Gingrich already has suggested, with varying degrees of earnestness, the elimination of the Education and Labor departments, the Food and Drug Administration, the Health Care Finance Administration and NASA. But is he really talking about abolishing the agency that will process some 115 million tax returns this year?

"Eliminating it or reducing it so dramatically . . . you've always got to have some kind of revenue service, but you don't need to have one which is in every single decision" and which requires taxpayers to keep so many records, Gingrich said in a television interview.

The Georgia Republican's "Contract With America" and campaign for smaller government are credited with the wins last November that gave Republicans control of Congress. And Gingrich shows no signs of letting up.

"I haven't backed off an inch," he said Saturday of his pledge to eliminate federal funds to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which airs the popular "Sesame Street."

"I am willing to try to find a way for them to survive," Gingrich added, "but not at the taxpayers' expense. Not a penny."

He has suggested similar fates for the National Endowment for the Arts and Pell grants to low-income college students.

As for the Education Department, it "certainly has to be looked at as being on the chopping block," Gingrich said. The Department of Labor, too.

The speaker said he's considering a proposal by Rep. Steve Gunderson, R-Wis., that would merge the two departments into a new Department of Education and Training, eliminate the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and save an estimated $21 billion over five years.

Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation is spending $500,000 to design a drug-approval process that would privatize the FDA's principal function.

Even the surgeon general would not be spared.

Calling Dr. Henry Foster's controversial nomination for surgeon general "a pretty abysmal performance" by White House staff, Gingrich said, last week, the post should be abolished and the duties merged with another position in the Department of Health and Human Services.