IRS Oversight While Eliminating Spending (OWES) Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. I thank my colleague from Missouri for bringing this bill to the floor and for his leadership in holding the IRS accountable.

Mr. Speaker, I guess we should start with the question of who is attacking whom. When you look at the actions of the IRS, especially in the last few years--and we have exposed this through our oversight here in this House majority--we have found it is the IRS that has been attacking the hardworking taxpayers of this country.

It has not only been documented, but it has come out in hearings that the IRS was actually targeting people--American citizens--based on their political views. The IRS was. You could expect this, maybe, in a Third World country where the government would actually be attacking people based on their political views, but, here in America, this IRS was doing just that, and we exposed it.

One is seeing with the bill that Congressman Smith is bringing forward that the IRS has created, in essence, a slush fund, using user fees for things that weren't even intended and that aren't even in the purview of Congress. What are they afraid of? Why are they afraid of having some real transparency so that we can actually hold the IRS accountable for these user fees? Hundreds of millions of dollars of user fees, by the way, are paid by hardworking families out there who are struggling to get by. When somebody actually calls the IRS hotline right now, estimates are that fewer than 40 percent of Americans who call the IRS hotline to get help are able to get help.

The IRS is not helping people they are supposed to be helping. They have these slush funds, and they don't want them to be under the purview of Congress? What are they afraid of hiding? Is it, maybe, that we are going to expose more things, like they are using taxpayer money to target people? Maybe we are going to expose more things, like they were actually hiring people who were fired from the IRS because they were improperly accessing people's taxpayer data, or the fact that they have given out bonuses to people when they can't even show they have a customer service plan.

When one is looking at so many abuses by the IRS, it is an agency that is out of control. Now we have a bill by the gentleman from Missouri to at least bring some of that into the purview of Congress so that it is exposed in the sunshine of transparency. Why be against transparency? Let's pass this bill.

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