The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ISSUES OF THE DAY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2942-H2948 on May 23, 2013.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It has been an interesting week here in Washington, especially here on Capitol Hill. We found out a great deal we didn't know before. We're getting more details. It's intriguing that we have the IRS official, Ms. Lerner, who knew--found out about--the outrageous practice of targeting what were perceived to be the President's enemies--people who wanted the Constitution followed, people who felt they had been taxed enough already, the Tea Parties, constitutional groups, pro-Israel groups, conservative groups, people who could have made a difference in the last election.
One reporter had asked before, Why would people even be bothering to get legal status? Why would they even apply to the IRS to get 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status?
The answer is: because that's the way the government has taken over people's political abilities, because you can't call people to Washington or call people to come state their opinions without normally raising money, and if you don't have a legally recognized group by the IRS, then the IRS will go after the individuals who engage in pooling money and in helping pay people's way to get them here. They'll go after the individual.
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We have forced people who want to make their voices heard collectively into begging the IRS for legal status, and the threats are there if you don't get their legal status recognized. Then when we see what the IRS has done as just an arm, basically, of the Democratic Party to help defeat or help prevent people from having legal status, it is absolutely incredible, especially when you find out they wouldn't even give them an answer ``yes'' or ``no''; because these people at the IRS, the higher ranking officials, they knew if they denied a request, gee, that could be appealed and they might get an answer before the election, and they weren't going to let that happen in time, at least, to make a difference in the election. So it's what most people who care about the Constitution have been afraid of for so long.
I've heard some people, some friends, some Republican friends say they think Richard Nixon was a great President, but I've read transcripts of conversations. Anybody who will say one thing to one person and turn right around immediately thereafter and say exactly the opposite to another person and play them against each other, I just can't consider that to be a great President.
We know that under the Nixon administration the IRS was used to target an enemies list, but now we find that under this administration it's been used and abused as a process, as a political arm in ways that Richard Nixon would never have dreamed possible. He never would have dreamed that anybody would get away with this kind of activity before an election, especially after Watergate. And so it has been.
So we want to take this time to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that people are aware and the Record contains the stories of different Tea Party groups and the difficulties they've had. In that regard, I am quite proud to yield to my friend from New Mexico, Mr. Steve Pearce. Hopefully, it won't hurt his reputation for me to call him a dear friend. That's the way I figure him.
Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and we will hold those comments quietly between ourselves here.
You bring up a point that absolutely must be discussed in public. We need to highlight those things that are going on right now from our government towards its citizens.
Our Founding Fathers understood this policy very well, this concept. They said:
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I hear constantly from people in America right now that we fear the government, we fear the retribution, we fear that they're going to come in and take things from us, that they're listening to us at all times. Many would discard that as simply paranoia, until now.
An 83-year-old grandmother in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who I've known for the last 15 years, since I've gotten into political circles--she's probably the most joyful, ebullient person in all of politics because she's here for what comes in the heart, not for what it can do for her. You see, she's a naturalized citizen who was born in Indonesia.
She came here and ended up, from ages 12 to 16, spending time in the Japanese internment camps because of her origin, though she's not Japanese herself. She has experienced the government that would become heavy-handed in a time of war. But the government that would become heavy-handed over political processes is a completely different government than that during World War II.
She helped establish the Children's Freedom Scholarship Fund, where she hands out patriotic coloring books to youngsters in the Albuquerque area. And because of these activities that got the attention of the IRS, they came in and audited and harassed this 83-year-old grandmother.
I had an email before the scandal broke about one of my constituents in Socorro, who said: I was audited and we couldn't figure out why. I talked to my accountant. During the audit, we couldn't figure it out. There was no unusual question. But during the audit, I noticed a handwritten name across my file, and I just made mental note of it.
After an audit that asked nothing specific, the auditor asked, Do you know--and he read the name. The guy says, It doesn't ring a bell to me. It did not. On the drive home, he said, Wait a minute. That's that meeting I went to 3 years ago. That's the meeting where I said, I don't want to be a part of this group. They're interested in the Constitution and the debt. I know about all that stuff. He writes a small check, leaves and never goes back. One meeting with the guy who later formed the Tea Party--it wasn't even formed--causes an audit.
When our government knows this kind of minute information and is willing to single you out, to veritably persecute you, because persecution is when we're dealt with differently, we have a different set of rules, that then qualifies as persecution. When this government is willing to do that, it causes us to say, Wait. This is not paranoia. This is justifiable fear of our government.
A small school in my hometown wanted to charter itself and submitted a 501(c)(3) application. The application was never handled. It went on and on and on. Our office made a call, and then the person listed on the organizational chart was called in for an audit.
I will tell you that we were told by the administration spokesman yesterday, Mr. Lew, the Treasury Secretary, that there's absolutely no indication that this was anything political.
There's absolutely no indication that it was anything but political, Mr. Lew. Regardless of what you all say down the street, understand that the American people are frightened of the government. They also think, with respect to the idea that we're going to hold people accountable--we hear that: We're going to hold people accountable; we're going to bring them in; we're going to look; we're going to find the facts, and then we're going to hold them accountable.
The American people look with a little bit of curious disregard for those statements.
Why would Americans be suspicious of the government, that they won't actually do anything to the people who are involved, that they won't actually get to the bottom of it? Well, there's a track record in the last 5 years that has caused the American citizens to look with disdain at any promises that there will be penalties, that the wrongdoers would be punished.
You can start with the Fort Hood shooter. He has not yet been brought to trial. He murdered dozens of people, and he has drawn $287,000 in pay because they can't take him off the payroll until he comes to trial. Meanwhile, the victims can't get their pay from the government that they're supposed to receive, and the American people understand an injustice is occurring from this White House because they will not pursue convicting a man that everyone knows has committed murder.
Well, it's said that's one instance. We can, then, take a look at Fast and Furious. I was one of the first to call for Attorney General Holder to resign, and we should look more closely at his participation in the Fast and Furious, where rifles were sent across the border and came back and killed an American employee of the Border Patrol. Yet no one has been held accountable for that action there.
Mr. GOHMERT. I think that it's worthy to note that apparently, when there was a Fox News reporter named Rosen that wanted to look into this Fast and Furious information and hopefully get the scoop, get to the bottom line of what really happened, instead of this Justice Department doing as it told the American people, as the Attorney General and all these other people said as part of this administration, ``We're going to get the people responsible for this,'' instead of being diligent and relentless in getting to the bottom of what happened--who approved these 2,000 or so guns being sold to criminals that would be in criminal hands and ultimately used to kill hundreds of Mexicans?
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Mexico should be outraged at what this administration has done. Instead of doing that, they go after a reporter that wants to find out what happened. They end up going after his phone records. They go after his email, from what we've learned, apparently. Possibly other family members. And they still, all these years later, haven't given us real information on who was responsible, who authorized that, who forced the sale of those guns. All we know is that this administration has tried to use Fast and Furious to demand more gun control legislation.
And we have a President that goes down to Mexico in the last 2 or 3 weeks and tells them about how outrageous it is that America has been selling guns to criminals that are using them in Mexico. He should have donned his hat and said, Thank you very much, my administration did that to you, and I'm very sorry. But, oh, no, he blames America without actually saying, Please, I beg your forgiveness. This was my administration's doing.
They haven't even gotten to the bottom and, instead, go after the reporter that tried to find out what happened. That's even more outrageous, and it goes to just what the gentleman was saying about people wondering how can we trust this administration when they've said that they're going to get the people responsible and they've done no such thing.
Mr. PEARCE. I think the gentleman's points are well made, and to continue the discussion of why Americans might be skeptical about whether anyone will pay any price for what has happened in the targeting of certain groups in this country by the Internal Revenue Service, it's also important that we look at other cases that have not yet been prosecuted and in which wrongdoing occurred.
MF Global was a commodities trading firm. Jon Corzine, a Democrat-
elected official, took over that firm. It's against the law, when you have your money in these trading accounts, whether it be Merrill Lynch or whoever, it is against the law to take your money out and use it for corporate governance activities, for corporate organizational activities. And yet Jon Corzine reached down into customer accounts and pulled out $1.5 billion of money from account holders and spent it trying to keep his failing organization together. His efforts failed. MF Global filed bankruptcy. That was in 2011, and still Mr. Corzine has not had to answer any questions, has been convicted of no wrongdoing, hasn't been brought to trial, and hasn't had a grand jury impaneled.
Bernie Madoff, we saw him take billions from investors. And for decades, the regulators had reports that he was doing it, and not one regulator has been held accountable for their oversights and omissions. No one has ever checked.
So when we hear the administration say, Trust us; we're going to get to the bottom of this IRS scandal and we're going to hold people accountable, there is an anger building among the American people that says we don't think that Washington will hold anyone accountable.
You have the AP reporters whose phone records were gotten, and not just the ones who were involved, but the broad pool of reporters, and yet nothing is happening to the people in the Justice Department who did that.
Benghazi is another element where we believe no one will ever be held accountable. In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says, What does it matter?
What it matters, ma'am, is that someone allowed American soldiers to be killed without reinforcements. C-130s were within flying time. Drones were there. Lasers were locked onto the artillery that were firing rounds into that compound, and no one says a word.
And so we have the Internal Revenue Service investigating and holding audits for law-abiding citizens like this 83-year-old grandmother. Meanwhile, there are over $1 billion of unpaid taxes by Federal employees. Why doesn't the Internal Revenue Service go after the Federal employees who refuse to pay their own taxes.
The highest profile case is Mr. Geithner, who became Treasury Secretary; and we were told that he's such an important person, he can't be held to account for small actions like that. Yet one political party, one political viewpoint has been singled out by this administration in order to put the chill on people who might be involved in activities that would disagree with the government.
We've seen governments like this before in American history. We've seen tyrants before. We've seen tyranny before in world history, and I think Democrats, Republicans, and Independents are going to stand up on these issues and demand accountability from Washington. I think the American people are coming together with a will and a backbone that will stand up and say, You, the people who perpetrated these evils and these crimes, will be accountable.
That's what makes this country great. That's what makes this country the envy of all other nations because we have a Constitution that our Founding Fathers put in place which gives the people the power. The government is working at the approval of the American people. I think the American people are coming together across racial lines, across party lines, across religious and cultural lines to say that we demand accountability from our government officials, that we will not allow any citizen to be treated this way.
The Nation spoke this way when it was Richard Nixon, and I think the Nation will speak this way under this administration. The parallels are extreme. When the government gets too strong, it's time for the people to stand up and say, No, you are not all powerful, that we the people do establish and ordain.
I think the people of this country are going to question this establishment and are ordaining. I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, and I would like to yield to the gentleman for a question.
It's my understanding that the Albuquerque Tea Party was one that filed for 501(c)(4) status 3 years ago. I don't know if the gentleman is familiar with the Albuquerque Tea Party.
Mr. PEARCE. I am. I've been there many times. They're people concerned about small government. They're concerned about the debt and the deficit. They understand that these are the biggest risks that we face, and they speak articulately and coherently about that. They are also groups that hold elected officials accountable for their actions. I think those are positive things.
Mr. GOHMERT. Well, apparently, after 2 years of waiting, they got a multipage letter from the IRS asking for really extensive, intrusive information that it sounds like the IRS should never have had to inquire about. But here again, it sounds like another case where the IRS knew if they ruled on whether or not they would have 501(c)(4) status, they could have appealed and probably had a good case based on what the IRS has been doing. They wouldn't give them an answer.
Mr. PEARCE. We had been listening. Before everyone recognized it was a nationwide scandal, we were hearing these reports. No matter that we disagreed with the Obama administration on policies, we never believed these reports to be true. So we investigated, but you could never substantiate. And now, then, 2 and 3 and 4 years later, to find out that it was systemic, that it was intentional, and that it was politically motivated causes one to fear for the very institution that we call our Constitution and our government.
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Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming the time momentarily, it's interesting, you know, we find out, as people have been digging deeper over the last few days, that the President of the United States met with the anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before the agency targeted the Tea Party.
National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley commented on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House, and made this statement: For me, it's about collaboration.
So it is also important to note, and I didn't know if my dear friend was familiar with Executive Order 13522, I wasn't until just the last couple of days, but redstate.com had done a job of finding this.
This was an executive order that the President ordered, beginning in 2009, requiring that government agencies collaborate, consult in pre-
decisional discussions with union bosses that would have to be off the record, unrecorded, and private, beyond the reach of anyone seeking to get information about the conversations.
And, in fact, this administration said pre-decisional discussions, by their nature, should be conducted confidentially among the parties to the discussions. This confidentiality is an essential ingredient in building the environment of mutual trust and respect necessary for the honest exchange of views and collaboration.
Well, this is the President that was going to have the most transparent administration in American history; yet, I didn't know, in 2009, he ordered these agencies that ought to be completely transparent, ordered them, his employees, to have meetings before they make important decisions with union bosses.
So that tells us something too about the atmosphere that was being created, when a union boss gets to have secret conversations with government officials that cannot be retrieved by any of us wanting the administration to be transparent. And we know that those unions were anti-Tea Party. They wanted them eliminated, and they get to go talk to the IRS officials that are making decisions about targeting the Tea Parties. Something seems awry.
I yield to my friend for a comment.
Mr. PEARCE. Yes, I would agree with the gentleman. Something seems awry.
The American people have a fascinating intuitiveness about them. It's reported that the unions spent $40 million to defeat Scott Walker. The reason Scott Walker won, he won 40 percent of the union vote.
People who are supposedly represented by the union bosses understand that when their leadership begins to take this country in the wrong direction, that they will exercise their voices and they will speak up; and that's the very powerful reminder that we, as people, have at the ballot box.
When the American people are left without government interference, without government threats, without the IRS intimidation, the American people choose rightly an awfully big percentage of the time. So I have the ultimate belief, because I'm hearing Democrats here on Capitol Hill as outraged as Republicans. I heard Republicans under the Nixon administration as outraged as Democrats.
It's when we come together in a common belief that our Nation, regardless of political viewpoints, represents all viewpoints, that we all have a right to speak, that we all have a right to compel. That's what's made us strong through our history.
And so those Democrats who now are saying that the IRS and this administration have gone too far are the strength of this country, as Republicans were under the Nixon administration.
So I have the ultimate belief that we, as Americans, are coming together again in our core principles to understand that no government, no matter which party, is powerful enough to come in and have watchdogs over us, to allow members of their party to take $1.5 billion from segregated accounts without being held accountable for the criminal actions.
They understand that we cannot break the laws of this Nation and other nations, sending guns to a foreign country illegally; not even the government can do that.
And they understand there's something intrinsically wrong when we hear the pleas of our four embassy personnel saying we need help, and we refuse it.
The American people have had enough. It doesn't matter that it's Democrat. If it was a Republican, it would be enough too. And I think the American people are coalescing into an idea that we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
And I believe that coalescing is going to provide us the framework for a new political institution. Don't know what it'll look like, don't know how it's going to shape up, but the American people are saying that enough is enough. Enough corruption. Enough scandals. Let's start cleaning out the mess. And that's what I hear from constituents from both parties every week I'm at home.
We're going to continue our work here, but I thank the gentleman for yielding and appreciate his bringing this issue to the floor.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you very much. It is an important issue.
We have a report here indicating the currently countless numbers, trying to get a count of groups that were targeted. We've seen reports that groups, Jewish and Christian groups, that were very supportive of Israel got heightened scrutiny by the IRS. They were deemed, apparently, not to be supportive of the President, as the IRS, apparently, at least their leaders, wanted them to be. And, obviously, that was after consulting with the union boss, the IRS employees.
Let me just say I know many IRS employees, and there are those who are afraid to comment because of concern over their repercussions; but they're outraged because they came into the IRS and they were taught and they were trained you cannot have any conflict of interest. You cannot make any decisions based on political bias. You cannot have ever owed the IRS any money if you're going to work for us.
In fact, there was outrage among some that were afraid to speak up because they were not allowed. They were told that you cannot underpay through withholding what you will ultimately owe on your income tax. Or if you file an amended return where you failed to initially include income, you may be fired from the IRS.
So the first thing that this President does is go out and hire a guy who swore, I believe it was three or four years in a row, he swore to his employer that he would pay the taxes that were due and owing. If they would just give him all the money, he would see that the taxes on that money was paid.
And lo and behold, those taxes were not paid, as he swore he would. And not only was he not barred from working for the IRS; he was made the boss over the IRS, the boss over the entire Treasury Department.
But the Greater Phoenix Tea Party in Arizona filed for a 501(c)(4) in October of 2010 and, after waiting 2 years, received a letter demanding an inordinate amount of information. And so far, even now, this Internal Revenue Service has refused to give them an answer on their 501(c)(4), effectively keeping them out of the political process for the 2012 election cycle, and now working, apparently, even now, to keep them out of the 2014 election cycle.
Amazing how effective the IRS can be when one administration can use them to further their goals.
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The Mississippi Tea Party filed for a 501(c)4 status in 2009. On September 28, 2010, the group received a letter from the IRS wanting additional information, including what their relationship was with the Tea Party Patriots. But their analysis got rather abusive.
The Portage County Tea Party in Ohio applied for tax exempt status and they received incredibly onerous questions, harassing questions, and they answered them, gave them information that no one should have to provide. Four years later, they're still waiting on an answer.
The Mississippi Tea Party. They're still waiting. The Portage County Tea Party. They're still waiting. Anyway, it's just incredible.
The Alabama Tea Party we already mentioned. Really abusive requests were made by the IRS, harassing them. The Texas Patriots Tea Party filed for a 501(c)(4) status in June of 2012. They received numerous followup questions and have not heard back from the IRS about their status. So they were effectively kept out of the 2012 political process.
Again, apparently there are reporters that are so far removed from how the political process has been forced to work. You've got to have IRS approval or they will come after you individually when you try to engage in any type of group effort. It used to be there was a freedom of assembly. You could gather people, assemble people as you want. You could pay for their bus fare. Unions do it all the time. But they have a very special status, obviously, with this administration.
One of the great scenes in video history was my old friend, Andrew Breitbart, coming out of the Coliseum and seeing all these protesters. He starts asking them about their signs, what they mean, can they give specific examples about when Glenn Beck lied or things they had on their signs. They couldn't. And it was amazing. I didn't see it in the beginning of the video but Andrew saw it immediately. These people were plants. They were handed these signs by their union. They were told to stand there and talk about people lying, and just demean individuals and organizations, as instructed by their union leaders.
When he got to the bottom of it, there was a note somewhere that it was produced by the union. So he got to the bottom of it. He had a camera that followed him as he would ask questions very pointedly. It became very clear they didn't know what they were there about, they couldn't give individual examples. They were told to go out there and be a protester. And the unions took care of it. And when the cameras were making them look bad, they were ordered to get back on the union bus and leave the area by the union bosses. Andrew had that gift. He could see right through all the baloney. It's a shame he's no longer with us. But what he has left is an organization that's doing even more amazing things.
You had the Ottawa County Patriots from Michigan file for 501(c)(3) status August 22, 2011. They're still waiting for a ``specialist'' to approve their application, despite numerous attempts to get clarification from the IRS. So they were totally kept out of the 2012 political process because of the partisan IRS leadership that would not even give a ruling on these things. It wasn't a problem for organizations that were supportive of the administration, apparently.
There were groups like the Louisa, Virginia, Tea Party in Virginia that decided not to apply after they heard from other Tea Party groups just how abusive the IRS was being. And their leaders didn't want to go through individually what other Tea Party leaders were having to go through. So the Louisa VA Tea Party never got their lawful status from the IRS. All of those people were effectively kept out of the 2012 political cycle by this partisan IRS work and effort.
The DeLAND 912 organization from Florida also heard about the horror stories of how abusive the IRS became if you applied for legal status as a Tea Party, so they didn't apply. Once again, the IRS was successful in their political endeavors in silencing another group of people from Florida during that political cycle.
Goose Creek 912 Project from South Carolina, they were preparing to file for a 501(c)(3) status or 501(c)(4) but after they heard about all of the harassment of other Tea Party groups, they voted unanimously not to file. The IRS partisan efforts worked. Another group of Americans were silenced because of the partisan political work of the IRS.
The McLean Tea Party in Illinois, another case where they decided not to apply after they got word of all the horror stories about the IRS abuses of individual Tea Party leaders and the individual Tea Party constituents themselves of the intrusive, abusive questions and information that was being demanded by the IRS.
The Lanier Tea Party Patriots from Georgia also heard about the widespread, massive abuse of Tea Parties that applied for legal status. So yet another group of people was silenced by the partisan, abusive Internal Revenue Service.
As I said, I know numerous employees of the IRS that would never think of being abusive like this. It is completely an anomaly to their way of thinking. It is counterintuitive to everything they have been taught and trained. But somehow this administration comes in and all of a sudden they see the IRS as the greatest political gift any partisan group could ever have and they use and abuse it after consulting, as ordered, by the President of the United States. They are ordered to have secret meetings with union bosses before they make decisions, which we now know occurred before they made decisions to go after the Tea Parties.
So the President of the United States signs Executive Order 13522 and orders an agency that is supposed to be completely nonpartisan, nonpolitical, to meet with an extremely political, extremely partisan boss before they make decisions. It is staggering.
So we know there's some that ask, Did the President know, did he not know? When you see that the President of the United States ordered meetings with partisan union bosses before decisions could be made by administrative heads at the IRS, it doesn't seem to me to matter much whether the President knew that they specifically targeted the Tea Parties. He ordered them to meet and to take in consideration what the union bosses said. If he ordered that those be completely confidential and beyond the scope of Freedom of Information Act requests, then there has to be some responsibility taken where the buck ultimately stops.
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The Rowan County Tea Party in Tennessee--hopefully I'm saying that correctly--the good folks there filed for 501(c)(4) status in February of 2010. They received demands for excessive amounts of information, some of which is not required by law whatsoever.
Just 2 weeks ago, after over 3 years, and being kept out of the 2012 election cycle, having any input--not just on the President's race, but on issues--they didn't care about political candidates; they cared about issues. They knew if they could form these political Tea Parties, they could have an effect. Whether it was a Democrat, Republican, a Libertarian or an Independent that came forward, they knew that if they were a group as a Tea Party, they could get powerful enough and have their voices heard loudly, as they spoke loudly enough as a group, that somebody--Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent--somebody would step forward and say I support what you believe, and I'm with you on the issues.
They were not about a party. They spent a lot of time being mad at the Republican Party, like I do. They weren't about a party; they were about the process. They wanted a constitutional country and a government that acted within the confines of the Constitution. And the IRS was determined to subjugate them, to punish them, to abuse them, and abuse the process of the IRS to make them pay for having the audacity to speak up or try to speak up, as did our Founders.
I can't help but note, I was tickled, some left-wing drone organization--drone basically being unmanned; they're not using their brains; they're just doing as they're directed--came after me for saying here on the floor, gee, the IRS might have shot the original Tea Party participants. Well, obviously that's hyperbole. But I found in Washington if you use sarcasm, you speak metaphorically, allegorically, use hyperbole, that it's often lost here.
We were having a discussion, for example, about endangered species. And I mentioned, gee, I understood--wasn't sure if it was true--but I understood there had been a pair of spotted owls that we were told for years couldn't mate anywhere but virgin woods, untouched by human hands, that may have been seen mating in a Kmart sign. In sheer sarcasm, in irony, I said, you know, a lot of Kmarts have been out of business. Maybe we need to see if that's really true and, if so, maybe get Kmart signs and see if they ought to be declared endangered and maybe have a Kmart sign forest where these little owls could mate like crazy out there in the Kmart sign.
And I look over at people and reporters, folks sitting there, and you could see people looking at each other: Do you think he's serious? Anyway, it's an interesting place to--not live, but work here in Washington, D.C.
You have the Rochester Tea Party Patriots in Minnesota. They filed for 501(c)(3) status in August 2010. The group finally received their 501(c)(4) status 2 years later in 2012, but not soon enough to have the kind of effect that they could have to make nominees, potential nominees, accountable for abiding by the rule of law and following the Constitution, as they wanted to do.
The Chattanooga Tea Party in Tennessee, they filed for 501(c)(4) status in November of 2009. The group received a letter from the Cincinnati IRS office in July 2010 with extensive, intrusive, abusive questions and demands. After 4 years, they received notification that they were approved. Apparently, as this scandal was about to break, the IRS realized, gee, well, we got what we wanted; we kept them out of the 12 election cycle so they could not have any influence whatsoever there. And we're about to get in trouble, so why don't we start giving approval to some of these folks. And we're seeing that happen.
The San Angelo Tea Party--the town that my parents lived in briefly right after they got married, San Angelo Tea Party back in Texas--they filed for tax-exempt status. But after receiving the intrusive, abusive, mean-spirited demand for information that the IRS had no business inquiring after, they withdrew their application. Once again, the IRS didn't have a chilling effect; they had a freezing effect. Froze them out and kept them from being able to participate as a group in the 2012 election cycle.
The San Fernando Valley Patriots in California filed for 501(c)(4) status in the fall of 2010. The group heard nothing from the IRS until February of 2012, when they received a packet from the IRS in the mail giving the group a 20-day time period to respond. After the abuse, the demands, the intrusiveness, the outrageous activity of the IRS, the San Fernando Valley Patriots in California finally, in August of 2012, felt like they had no choice but to crater under the abusive weight and power of a partisan, mean-spirited IRS leadership; and they pulled their application in order to protect their members from this kind of abuse.
So you've got to say, the executive order in 2009 by the President of the United States--current President--ordering the extremely partisan union bosses to be consulted on decisions by the IRS, find out that the union boss met with the President right before the decision was made as well. I guess when you're the President, you don't have to sign an executive order requiring that you have secret, confidential meetings with union bosses before you make decisions. You just do it, appears to be the case.
Then we find out, gee--and this is a brand-new story, this one by David French dated May 22, yesterday afternoon--that it wasn't just Tea Parties; it wasn't just constitutional groups; it wasn't just pro-
Israel groups. The article title is ``IRS Morality: Defend Planned Parenthood, Deluge Adoptive Families With Audits.'' In the article, skimming on down, it says:
During the 2012 filing season, 90 percent of the returns that claimed a refundable adoption credit were subject to additional review to determine if an examination was necessary.
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The most common reasons were income and a lack of documentation.
It notes that:
Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit.
Of the completed adoption tax credit audits, over 55 percent ended with no change in the tax owed or refund due in fiscal year 2012. The median refund amount involved in these audits was over $15,000 and the median adjusted gross income of the taxpayers involved is about $64,000.
These would be considered middle class Americans.
The average adoption credit correspondence audit currently takes 126 days, causing a lengthy delay for taxpayers waiting for refunds.
It's interesting because we get word--as the article said--that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood in order to have or keep their tax exempt status.
It points out this statistic:
In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent.
And that more details can be obtained from the Taxpayer Advocate Service.
It's really outrageous. And it's pretty clear to anybody familiar with the political process here in Washington that most people that are very supportive of adoption are not in favor of abortion. So if you want to go against--as the IRS, if you want to go after the opponents of Planned Parenthood, you want to go after the opponents of killing babies in utero, then if you go after parents that adopt children--a very, very costly process--you can have a very chilling or freezing effect on those parents who just want to adopt a child, adopt children, give them a loving home.
And this IRS' morality--as the article points out, because of the current leadership that is now under scrutiny--go after these middle-
income folks that are not supportive of abortion and want to adopt, we'll teach them a lesson. It's very clear, it just screams from the statistics and information that we get from the IRS.
It's also worth noting--as prior articles have--that people have claimed, not the adoptive tax credit, but the child tax credit has been claimed--as has been shown many times--by people who did not legally come into the country. And there have been articles about that. Of course, I guess, everybody knows they'll never get a Pulitzer Prize for incredible investigative reporting on the billions of dollars that may be obtained by people who come into the country illegally and then have learned you can claim a tax credit and get more money back than you put in. Oh, no, even if you don't have a Social Security number--as the law currently requires--to get that child tax credit, the IRS thought: Hey, we've got a good idea, we don't care that Congress said you've got to have a Social Security number, hey, we want to get all the tax income in we can, and we hear from some of the folks in Congress that there are people somewhere out there in the shadows, so we'll just give them a taxpayer number, even if they don't have a Social Security number, and let them get that child tax credit from there. So there are plenty of people that have come out of the so-called shadows to claim a child tax credit.
That's why Robert Rector, in talking with him this week, he says the projection probably that if people who are here undocumented, illegally, whatever you want to call it, are given legal status, then it will likely cost the country around $10 billion that these individuals will be able to get back in child tax credit once they're legally here and that many are getting even now. An estimated $1 billion--one estimate I read was $4 billion--that we're currently paying out from the Treasury to people that are getting more back than they paid in who are not legally here, don't have a Social Security number.
So they're not going after those folks. Not auditing, not going in and demanding to know where are all these children you claim to get all this money back--$20,000, $30,000 you're getting back from the government for a child tax credit--where are all the children? Oh, no, they're not going after them. No. They much prefer to go after what some of these partisan political leaders in the IRS see as their political enemies.
When you have people like that heading up the IRS, you don't have to have an enemies list, like Richard Nixon had. You've got your friends at the IRS that are doing it for you.
So when we hear claims of outrage and we see that these people have suffered absolutely no consequences from this President--the boss--as a result of their outrageous, illegal, unconstitutional activity, then it seems that maybe the outrage is not as loud as we were being told that it originally has been.
And then when you find out that the AP--certainly hasn't helped me any, but that doesn't matter, we're supposed to have a free press--if they want to go after a guy that's conservative that has a southern accent, that's their prerogative. But we find out that the White House--the Justice Department at least--the Justice Department went after the AP, just like they did Rosen at Fox News, they go after the AP and get hundreds of phone numbers because they say they're after this egregious leak. The Attorney General told our committee last week, Gee, it's one of the most egregious leaks--not the most egregious, one of the most egregious leaks--he had ever seen. Turns out all of the leaks that allow him to go after a conservative group or to intimidate a group like the AP, to them they're egregious. When we find out, Mr. Speaker, he could have just looked at the records of a handful of people in the administration--he chose not to do that, it might have embarrassed the administration--he abuses the freedom of the press.
It's time that people who are responsible are made accountable.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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