The article presents the issue as a partisan one, but on the Democrats' side Elizabeth Warren is currently championing a bill [0] directing the IRS to reduce their cooperation with third-party tax preparation services and develop their own competitor, plus develop a return-free filing method, all without simplifying the tax code in the slightest. Which seems to me to be in a similar vein of demanding that the IRS "fix" the problems caused by our tax code: instead of making the tax code simpler, she wants to just direct the IRS to do people's taxes for them, on top of all the IRS' other responsibilities.
[0] previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492025