On February 5, 2019, the Senate Finance Committee approved by a 26-2 vote the nomination of Michael Desmond to be Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service and an Assistant General Counsel in the Department of the Treasury.

The action came during an organizational meeting of the Committee, which approved other nominations who were reported out of the Committee during the last Congress but not cleared by the full Senate.

At the close of the last Congress, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) prevented unanimous-consent approval of Desmond’s nomination over the Administration’s position on the limitation on the deductibility of state and local property taxes and state workarounds involving provisions for charitable contributions. Politico reported that “Menendez’s office said once more on Monday that he would still block Desmond because of the senator’s objections to how the IRS handled the TCJA’s $10,000 limit on state and local tax deductions,” as well as the nomination of Michael Faulkender to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) was the other senator who opposed the nomination in the Committee’s vote.

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