Tag: Protecting Consumers, Taxpayers, and the Economy

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have joined colleagues in asking the federal Departments of Education and Justice for an update on efforts to improve how the agencies handle undue hardship claims by student borrowers in bankruptcy proceedings.  “The undue hardship exception (11 U.S.C. 523(a)(8)) currently

Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Missouri’s U.S. Senator Roy Blunt today announced the introduction of their No Facial Recognition at the IRS Act, a bipartisan bill to ban the use of biometric recognition technology by the IRS. The introduction of Merkley and Blunt’s bill comes less

Washington, D.C. – In a letter sent today to Internal Revenue Services (IRS) Commissioner Charles Rettig, Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Missouri’s U.S. Senator Roy Blunt demanded the IRS immediately discontinue any programs that collect, store, and use any type of biometric data to identify American taxpayers. The lawmakers’

Washington, D.C. –U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley this week joined colleagues to call on the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide penalty relief for taxpayers in Oregon and nationwide amid extensive, ongoing processing backlogs at the IRS. “While the COVID-19 pandemic has strained every

Washington, D.C. — United States Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), member of the United States Senate Committee on Finance, and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) led their colleagues in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressing concern that persistent underfunding of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will have negative effects on

Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley is introducing the Maintaining Access to Essential Services Act of 2021—legislation that would create a new program to protect all Americans’ access to power, heat, water and internet service during the coronavirus crisis and ensure that these critical home utilities are not

Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley teamed up with U.S. Representative Bill Foster (D-IL-11) today to lead 12 lawmakers in the introduction of the Investor Choice Act—legislation to prohibit pre-dispute mandatory (or “forced”) arbitration agreements and ban prohibitions on class action lawsuits in customer contracts that investors often must