No Hires for the Delinquent Irs Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

This bill is just the next segment of Republican Tax Distraction Day.

Certainly, we should focus on misconduct, on delinquencies, from whatever the source. But here, on Republicans Tax Distraction Day, they are about distracting attention from their failure to address the real problem with reference to delinquencies and misconduct, and that is a problem that they have just shown total indifference about.

For anyone who was listening even a little bit last week, world news around the globe focused on something called the Panama Papers, 11.5 million files explored over the course of an entire year by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists detailing how some people, especially the very wealthy, have used the secrecy of an offshore tax haven in Panama to avoid paying their taxes and, in some cases, illegal money laundering by organized crime and other forms of official corruption. This isn't just an American problem, but there is no American exceptionalism to it either. It is an international problem.

Our European allies have responded to the Panama Papers by initiating new efforts to try to get at this problem of tax abuse. And the truth of the matter is, this is just the tip of the iceberg with this 11.5 million papers because it is only about abuse in one of a number of secret tax havens.

But, of course, it did not attract universal attention. If you were in Beijing today and you were to search for the Panama Papers on the Web, what you would find is: Sorry, no relevant material.

There is another place that you will find nothing about the Panama Papers, and that is in the House Ways and Means Committee and the Republican Caucus because they haven't been interested. They have shown constant indifference to problems that are generated from these tax havens, from the dodging, from the avoidance, from the evasion that has been going on, when that ought to be the focus of our attention. Instead of real abuse, they focus on imagined abuse.

And keep in mind, by the way, this particular piece of legislation is designed to cover IRS employees for their delinquencies. They bother to exempt the Congress of the United States from that provision.

But I think the focus ought to be on these abuses and delinquencies that are occurring in other places that are costing us real dollars. The Panama Papers show the importance of our working together with our allies to address lawlessness and money laundering and tax evasion. They show why we need to be participating in the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting initiative.

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Mr. DOGGETT. They show why the Stop Tax Haven Abuse legislation that I have introduced and the Corporate EXIT Fairness Act, to deal with those who renounce their citizenship, why they deserve a hearing and attention, the attention that they are not getting today or any day from this Republican Congress.

If this Congress will do nothing to address this tax evasion and avoidance, the least we can do is to do no harm. But today's action does do harm. Rather than getting at the real problems, they seek to limit an already underfunded agency.

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Mr. DOGGETT. They seek to limit, impair, and hinder an already underfunded agency in doing its job of tax avoidance so that everyone contributes to the costs of our national security and vital services.

We need to be strengthening the law, ensuring fair enforcement, and ensuring that we have the resources necessary to keep America the strongest country in the world.

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