A Deeply Flawed Process

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Nov. 20, 2004

A DEEPLY FLAWED PROCESS

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this is what happens at the end of a session when things go bump in the night and on your desk you find a stack like this. I am a member of the Appropriations Committee. A lot of work has gone into this, but by waiting until the end of the session to put all of this in front of Members of Congress, it becomes literally impossible for us to meet our responsibility to say to the voters we represent that we know what is here; it is good for America, and we are voting for it. You have to operate on faith.

That faith is shaken if not destroyed when something comes through like this. If there is anything we are supposed to respect in this country, it is the right of privacy, particularly when it comes to Government records. To slip in this section 222 in the Treasury appropriation, and give to certain Members of Congress and their staff access to individual income tax returns which they can order up from the Internal Revenue Service and then use the contents with impunity, in other words, without any threat of civil or criminal prosecution if they disclose them, is to create a situation which, frankly, is beyond description.

We talked about enemies lists 40 and 50 years ago in America, where administrations would decide which Americans were not friendly and there was a hint or suspicion that the Internal Revenue Service was going to look at their tax returns. That is as far as it went.

Forget the hint of suspicion, this is an outright delegation of authority to elected officials in Congress and their staff to order up the tax returns of any person they choose. Could it be their opponent in the last election? Or maybe the candidate who might run against them next time? Could it be a whole branch of contributors to certain causes? All of those things are possible under this.

It strikes me as odd, if we are going to respect the right of privacy for individuals in this country, that we would delegate this authority and then say that the staff people and Members of Congress who use it can disclose the contents to the public without any fear of prosecution. They could turn them over to the press. They could use them on these talk shows. It could happen.

In case this sounds as if it is in the realm of the ridiculous, it happened to be on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill that a staffer hacked into my computer and stole 2,000 documents from my computer and turned them over to the press and special interest groups in Washington. He was caught, thank goodness, and now there is an investigation underway. But he was using material from my staff and my office in an effort to not only try to anticipate what might happen in the committee, but to use it against me politically. That happened at the Senate Judiciary Committee, the committee responsible for reviewing and designating future Justices in the Supreme Court. It happened within our committee.

Now what we are saying is we will write into law the access of Members of Congress and their staff to, not just the computer memos generated in my office, but income tax returns; that they could have access to an individual income tax return and disclose it with impunity, without any possibility of being held accountable for that fact. That is a troubling development.

I do not know who is responsible for it. It happened in an appropriations bill that it turns out at least Members on this side of the aisle were not aware it was included. But think about the fact that we are dealing with some 3,400 pages of legislation here. It is not possible for us to read through every word of this, every paragraph, and to find out if we can trust the contents of this to be something that is good for America and something about which we can cast our vote in favor.
I thank my colleagues for coming to the floor-Senator Conrad from North Dakota, Senator Baucus from Montana and others, Senator McCain from Arizona, for bringing to light this outrage.

It is not enough for us to limit this outrage to the point where we say we will pass it today and take care of it tomorrow. What happens in the meantime, after this is signed into law? What will happen? I don't know.

But we will be giving legal authority to individuals to misuse income tax returns of individuals, families, and businesses across America. That, in my mind, crosses a line which we should never allow to be crossed.

The Government serves us. We are the masters of this country because, in a democracy, the voters rule. When it reaches a point that you have to worry about the tyranny of a government invading your privacy, disclosing information which they have no business to publicly disclose, then we have crossed a line which we should never cross.

BREAK IN TEXT

Mr. DURBIN. That is my understanding. I would say to the Senator from Maryland, as you read it, it is even more expansive than I described it. I talked about asking for a tax return. As you read this language, they could ask for all of the tax returns of certain individuals or people living in certain areas or people working for certain companies or people contributing to certain charities or contributing to certain political candidates. They could go in and ask for all the information, and can do it without any penalty under law if they disclose that information or misuse it.

To think that we would give this authority in an appropriations bill of 3,400 pages, and we stumbled upon it in the last few moments, is an indication of some of the troubling possibilities in this piece of legislation.

Mr. SARBANES. The Senator is absolutely correct. I thank the Senator for answering the question.

Mr. DURBIN. I yield the floor.