WASHINGTON - Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) today made the following statement on the House floor in opposition to the Republican resolution calling for a Special Counsel to investigate the IRS:
“This Institution must not be turned into an arm of either political party. That’s what House Republicans are doing here. It’s been a year since multiple committee investigations began into the IRS handling of 501 c 4 organizations - and Republicans are no closer to finding evidence to back up their baseless allegations of a ‘White House enemies list’ or a ‘White House culture of cover-up,’ as Republicans said on Day 1.
“Here’s what is going on:
* More than 250 employees at the IRS have worked more than 100,000 hours and sent nearly 700,000 pages of documents to Ways and Means in response to Republican requests.
* More than 60 interviews have been conducted.
* $14 million in taxpayer money has been spent by the IRS responding to the Congressional Investigations.
“And here is what we know:
* Documents show that the IRS used inappropriate criteria to treat progressive groups as they did for Conservative Groups.
* There was never any evidence of White House involvement. Nada.
* There was never any evidence of political motivation. In fact, before the flawed audit was published last May, the IG’s head of investigations reviewed 5,500 pages of documents and determined that there was ‘no indication that pulling these selected applications was politically motivated.’ Instead, the head of investigations said the cases were consolidated due to ‘unclear processing directions.’
“So now Republicans have indicated that they think that this action today is necessary because the Department of Justice did not react quickly enough to the referral of information from Ways and Means on Lois Lerner that was sent last month. There is a letter from the Department of Justice saying that they have received the information and have referred it those in charge of the IRS investigation at Justice.
“So the Republicans say they want an independent investigation - but they really want to do is to interrupt the investigation going on and pre-empt it with their own political theatre.
“This is the House of Representatives, not a political circus. I ask my colleagues to see this for what it is worth and vote no on the Resolution."
