Relating to the Consideration of House Report and An Accompanying Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mrs. HINSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding to me today.

Mr. Speaker, President Biden and Speaker Pelosi are moving full steam ahead with their Big Government, big spending vision for this country. One of the most egregious proposals in their multitrillion-dollar reconciliation package would give the IRS access to nearly every single American's bank account by requiring financial institutions, like your local bank or your credit union, to report every account with more than $10,000 of transactions annually to the IRS.

This proposal would give the IRS unprecedented access to sensitive personal information and unprecedented power to target working families across Iowa and across America. This government snooping is a complete invasion of privacy and a massive overreach into our lives and our livelihoods.

This spying scheme is a lose, lose, lose. It will increase the existing backlog at the IRS exponentially. It will jeopardize the privacy of millions of Americans. It will destroy our community financial institutions. And it will hurt rural communities and working families hardest of all.

Democrats claim this is about tax evasion. Everyone should pay the taxes that they owe. That is not the argument here. But this misguided proposal isn't about tracking down missing revenue; it is about expanded government control, plain and simple.

This proposal, by design, will hit normal working families' bank accounts. A total of $10,000 in transactions in a year, that is a year's rent or a series of farm equipment bills, for example. The IRS should be focused on being more efficient at its current job, not emboldened and certainly not unleashed on hardworking Americans.

We do not need to be throwing more money at the IRS to put Americans' daily transactions under a microscope. Iowans have been very clear with me. They do not want the IRS snooping around in their bank accounts at that granular level.

I have also heard very serious concerns from our community financial institutions. These are the folks that are helping our farmers, our families, and our small businesses access credit. They told me this proposal could force them to shut down for good, leaving Iowans without access to credit and capital that they need to help keep our rural economy going to fuel and feed the world.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to put a stop to this madness and stand up for our constituents by voting ``no'' on the previous question, keeping the government out of Americans' bank accounts.

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