U.S. Republicans continue to seek answers to the alleged Internal Revenue Service (IRS) wrongdoings after five Congressional hearings on a major scandal have unearthed no new information.

The nation's capital erupted with scandal last month after it was learned that the powerful agency targeted conservative groups. The story has grabbed headlines and led to additional findings of the alleged IRS corruption, sparking outrage from both Republicans and Democrats.

Among the questions the IRS has yet to answer: Who ordered conservative groups to be targeted? What did they aim to find out? What were their motives?

Republican Representative James Lankford, member of the House Oversight Committee, on Monday said in a statement that Americans "know instinctively that there is a serious problem at the Internal Revenue Service."

"This is the moment to resolve the issue -- not sweep it under the rug," he added.

The comments came in response to Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings' statements Sunday that the case had been solved and that Congress should move on.

"Your actions over the past three years do not reflect a responsible, bipartisan approach to investigations," the ranking House Oversight Committee member told GOP House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa in a letter.

Issa, who blasted Cummings, said he strongly disagrees with Cummings'"assertion that we know everything we need to know about inappropriate targeting of Tea Part groups by the IRS."

"There still are many unanswered questions about the IRS scandal," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

"We don't know how the targeting was investigated or why it took the agency so long to investigate. I would be surprised if the White House was involved. But the scandal has the potential to hurt the president (Barack Obama) because of the mismanagement which took place and people's fears that the IRS was poorly supervised," he said.

The IRS imbroglio emerged amid a rash of other scandals involving the Obama administration.

Last week the story broke that the federal government was collecting phone records from Verizon customers, which has critics hurling accusations of state intrusion into citizens'private lives. Defenders argued that the information being collected was not the content of the conversations.

Journalists and lawmakers also expressed outrage over a report in May that the Justice Department had been monitoring -- critics call it snooping -- Associated Press journalists, secretly obtaining two months of its reporters' phone records, including home phones and cell phones.

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to push for more information on the administration's handling of September's terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which ended in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Endi

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