Holding Internal Revenue Service Accountable

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERRY. Madam Speaker, yesterday was tax day--or at least the deadline for filing and paying your taxes. I can't imagine very many citizens look forward to that.

We all know that we have to do our part, but we are often frustrated by the unacceptable waste of government spending. We all work hard; yet, they take our money and oftentimes spend it on things that we find objectionable or, worse, they simply waste it.

To add insult to injury, government doesn't have to follow the same standards that every citizen has to. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the IRS and its Commissioner, who scoffs at the very same rules that every other citizen has to abide by.

Now, I would just ask you: If you got subpoenaed to produce documents and to protect documents and just ignored it, how do you think that would go for you? If you lied to government officials--let's say government officials in the IRS--about your tax records, knowing that they are requirements, and you just refused to provide them, how do you think that that would be for you?

This is just another example of two sets of standards, one for the ruling class and another for the rest of the citizens. It was never intended to be this way, essentially where we are forced to serve our government.

In this particular case, these folks just had the wrong opinions about their government and they were sure that they would be protected under the First Amendment, protected from reprisal and punishment, but that is simply not the case.

Exactly what happened is that the IRS sought to cover up and blame others that had nothing to do with what happened.

Remember, the feared and omnipowerful IRS targeted and punished certain Americans solely because of what they thought of their government, violating their First Amendment right provided by God and enumerated in our Constitution.

Think about that. The full power and authority of the massive Federal Government and its endless resources focused on a few citizens because they dared to disagree. Is this a Communist country? Is this something worse?

Let's remember how this started. The inspector general did an investigation and said they were going to file a report.

Hearing that, Lois Lerner takes a planted question and lies about who did it. She blames it on the good workers in Cincinnati. The President calls for a criminal investigation, and the Commissioner is fired.

However, when it really came to conducting that investigation, the Department of Justice really just couldn't be bothered. Then the person at the center of the issue comes to Congress and pleads the Fifth.

Congress has to now look elsewhere for the truth. They are not going to get it from Ms. Lerner. So they look to her email communication.

Subpoenas are issued, two of them, and three protective orders, one by the IRS itself. The IRS violates literally all of it while saying they went to great lengths in search of the truth.

Come on. Great lengths? They didn't even check Ms. Lerner's BlackBerry.

The new Commissioner, Mr. Koskinen, hired to clean things up, knows that 422 backup tapes were destroyed, including 24,000 of Ms. Lerner's emails; yet, he waits 4 months to tell Congress while coming multiple times to testify to Congress during that period. You lie about your lost documents for 4 months and see what happens.

Mr. Koskinen violated his duty to preserve and provide the information. He violated his duty to disclose, he violated his duty to be truthful, and he violated his duty to correct the record about what he knew. Mr. Koskinen violated the public trust on multiple accounts.

The issue at hand is that the agency Mr. Koskinen represents violated the constitutionally guaranteed rights of American citizens and nothing has been done about it.

This simply cannot stand. We cannot have two separate standards of justice, one for the ruling class, one for the government, and one for the governed.

Congress has a duty to get to the truth. As Representatives of the citizens, we don't have a police force. We are Representatives. We can't fire the Commissioner. We are Members of Congress. The only remedy that Congress has is the constitutional check of impeachment.

Impeachment proceedings are the only way we can hope to get some relief from this agency which has been wantonly unaccountable in the most egregious fashion.

It is the only way we will be able to determine whether the Commissioner violated the standards of trust set down for government officials.

It is the only way we can start to move to a circumstance where our government serves the people as opposed to citizens being forced to serve their government.

So, Madam Speaker, as we reflect on tax day, I respectfully request the resolution regarding the impeachment of Commissioner Koskinen be forwarded to the Judiciary Committee and to this floor for consideration.

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