WASHINGTON — Despite his frequent criticism of the Internal Revenue Service, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan stopped short Thursday of backing a committee effort to impeach the agency’s commissioner, John Koskinen.

Ryan’s answer was effectively a no.

“Yes, I think this is an agency that has not been led well and this is an agency that needs to be cleaned up,” he said. “As far as these other issues, look, what I think what we need to do is win an election, get better people in these agencies and reform the tax code so we’re not harassing the average taxpayer with a tax code that they can’t even understand.”

However, Ryan said he is supportive of how the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has handled the IRS matter. He noted congressional scrutiny has exposed scandals at the agency and lawmakers have held it accountable through riders passed in last year’s omnibus appropriations bills.

Koskinen was on the Hill on Thursday to defend the agency’s cyber-security practices. He has come under fire from conservatives for a variety of reasons, but the heart of the impeachment effort is what many Republicans see as a failure to cooperate with congressional investigations into the IRS targeting of conservative political groups.

Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced a resolution in October to impeach Koskinen.

The resolution argues Koskinen failed to comply with a subpoena requesting certain IRS documents and that he provided false and misleading information to Congress about missing e-mails sent to and from former IRS official Lois Lerner.