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“WHITE HOUSE SCANDALS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S3708-S3709 on May 22, 2013.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WHITE HOUSE SCANDALS
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this last weekend White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer visited all five Sunday morning talk shows. What he tried to do there was to defend the Obama administration's handling of the various scandals we are all too familiar with. Unfortunately for the President, I think he only made things worse.
For example, he said President Obama's whereabouts on the night of the Benghazi terrorist attack were irrelevant. That is a strange use of the word. Where the President is when a terrorist attack kills four American citizens in Libya, to call that irrelevant strikes me as an odd choice of words.
He was also asked whether it is illegal for the IRS to target individuals and organizations for political reasons. Again, he said,
``It is irrelevant.'' Strange choice of words. In other words, if the American people were hoping that this White House would finally provide straight answers to basic questions, they were once again disappointed.
Let's review the facts starting with Benghazi, as the Senator from Nebraska was just talking about.
Eight months, of course, have passed since four brave Americans were killed by terrorists linked to al-Qaida. Eight months have passed since the Obama administration blamed the attack on a spontaneous demonstration incited by some amateur YouTube video.
Is it irrelevant that we don't know where the President of the United States was on the night of the attack or what he did or did not do to come to the aid of these four brave Americans who were at risk of losing their lives and did, in fact, lose their lives? Is it irrelevant that members of the Obama administration deliberately misled, time and time again, the American people about this act of terrorism? Is it irrelevant that Ambassador Susan Rice was blaming the massacre on a YouTube video the very same day Libya's President was calling it a preplanned terrorist attack? Is it irrelevant that the former deputy to the late Ambassador Chris Stevens has said that everybody at the U.S. Embassy believed from the start that it was a terrorist attack? Finally, is it irrelevant that this former deputy, Gregory Hicks, was punished by the State Department for cooperating with congressional investigators so the truth could get out?
That is a strange choice of words--``irrelevant.'' I don't think the American people believe that is irrelevant--any of these facts. In fact, I think what we can only conclude is that the culture the White House, unfortunately, has created is one where coverups, misdirection, prevarication and dissembling are OK, not being straight with the American people.
No wonder the American people doubt their leadership in Washington and particularly in the White House if the White House is going to create a culture in which these sorts of coverups are OK or, in the words of Dan Pfeiffer, simply irrelevant. When the American people can't trust the White House to be honest with them--and refuses to accept responsibility for their mistakes--it is not irrelevant.
As for the IRS scandal, some people have tried to dismiss the targeting of various conservative groups as a rogue operation managed by a few renegade staffers in the Cincinnati office. Yet the more we learn about this scandal, the bigger it seems.
Anybody who has been around a big bureaucracy--and certainly the IRS qualifies as a big bureaucracy--knows that when you ask the bureaucrats something, the easiest answer is no because they don't get in trouble for saying no. They may not be very helpful or responsive, but they don't get in trouble.
What strikes me as so bizarre about this idea that there are a number of free agents in Cincinnati who decided to cook this up on their own is it really goes against the grain of everything we know about bureaucracies. Why in the world would they take the initiative to target political speech unless they thought they either had the explicit or the implicit approval of their higher-ups? It just doesn't make any sense otherwise.
Last week one Cincinnati IRS employee told the Washington Post--and I think this has the ring of truth--that ``everything comes from the top. We don't have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.'' Now, that sounds like the bureaucracy that I know and am familiar with.
So I would like to ask the White House if it is irrelevant that America's tax collection agency was turned into a political attack machine, deciding that they were the ones who could police political speech and activity protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution? Is it irrelevant that an agency with the power to destroy people's lives adopted the tactics of a dictator? Is it irrelevant that senior IRS officials learned about these abuses at least 2 years ago and lied to Congress and the American people when we asked them about them?
When I got reports from the King Street Patriots and True the Vote in Houston, TX, and the Waco and San Antonio tea parties in 2011 and 2012 about some of the tactics they were being exposed to, I and other Members of the Senate wrote to the Commissioner of the IRS Mr. Shulman, and Mr. Miller, the Acting Commissioner, and they failed to disclose what we now know is the truth. Senator Hatch, the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee, yesterday told Mr. Miller that was a lie by omission at the very least. Certainly it was not telling the whole truth to the Members of Congress, whose responsibility is to provide oversight to the American people of the IRS and of the Federal Government. I don't think it is irrelevant when IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman categorically denied these abuses in sworn testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in March of 2012.
Furthermore, I don't think it is irrelevant that IRS officials may have committed criminal offenses. I realize that is a serious statement and charge to make, but we know this morning that the director of the Internal Revenue Service division overseeing nonprofit organizations has taken the Fifth Amendment when asked for sworn testimony by a congressional oversight committee.
To refresh everybody's memory, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means that you cannot be compelled to incriminate yourself and possibly expose yourself by virtue of your own testimony to a criminal prosecution. That is what taking the Fifth Amendment is.
While she is within her rights to take the Fifth Amendment, if she has a credible fear of prosecution for violating the criminal laws, I believe this elevates this scandal to a new level.
Finally, I would suggest to our friends at the White House that it is not irrelevant that a Texas businesswoman named Catherine Engelbrecht was targeted not only by the IRS but by the FBI, the ATF, and OSHA after she founded a pair of organizations in Houston, TX, known as the King Street Patriots and True the Vote.
I think most Americans would agree that all of this information is quite relevant, quite reprehensible, and something that Congress ought to, on a bipartisan basis, investigate.
I congratulate the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, a Democrat--not a member of my political party--and Senator Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, for the bipartisan way they have begun the investigation into this IRS scandal. What we all recognize, Republicans and Democrats alike, is that this is a threat to the public's trust in government institutions and that this culture of intimidation is not something we can stand for, using the extraordinary power of the Federal Government to target American citizens for exercising their constitutional rights. Indeed, if President Obama wants to know why the American people's trust in the Federal Government has plummeted to an alltime low, all he has to do is look at these two scandals and consider how the administration is handling them.
When government officials consistently mislead, stonewall, and abuse their power, people take notice, they don't forget, and the day of reckoning will surely come.
Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. It is my understanding that I have 10 minutes to speak. Will you confirm if that is correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
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