Thank you Chairman Crenshaw. I’d like to join you in welcoming Secretary Lew before the subcommittee for the second time. You lead a Department with a variety of missions important to our economy, our government, and our nation as a whole.
The Treasury Department plays a central role in promoting economic growth and opportunity through programs like the CDFI Fund, ensuring financial stability through the implementation of Dodd-Frank, enforcing our tax laws fairly, and managing our nation's finances. Your budget request for fiscal year 2015 promotes all of these things. Most of the agency is held to pretty austere budget levels, but there are significant requested investments at the IRS, which is the largest part of your budget.
And those requested increases are much needed. As I said at our hearing on the IRS a few weeks ago, almost $1 billion has been cut from their budget over the past four fiscal years, and we should not be surprised that the result is reduced service and an increased tax gap. Since that hearing, we have even more evidence of the negative impact that these budget cuts are having on the IRS. A recent GAO report found that the budget cuts to the IRS instituted over the last few years had resulted in reduced enforcement and reduced taxpayer services. This comes on top of reports that IRS audit rates are at their lowest levels since the 1980s. As it currently stands, these cuts have had the perverse effect of promoting noncompliance for those who want to cheat the system, while at the same time, deterring people who want to file their taxes correctly from getting their questions answered. Your budget request for the IRS attempts to reinvest in the agency, restore those losses, and reverse these wrongheaded incentives.
On a different topic, I am a strong supporter of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund which has helped promote economic investment in traditionally underserved areas. I understand that you are proposing a small decrease in the FY 2015 budget request for the CDFI Fund. Although I hope we will get to discuss this in more detail, I am particularly concerned by a separate proposal within this request to eliminate the Bank Enterprise Award program within the CDFI Fund. I have heard numerous concerns about this idea from various stakeholders, and just recently visited a CDFI that has been able to do great work in my district with funding from the BEA program. This part of the program is long standing, and I don't know that it makes sense to try and eliminate it at this time
Secretary Lew, there remain great challenges for your agency in the year ahead, with the continued implementation of the tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the ongoing stewardship of our economic recovery, and the need for further investment in key areas. We will work with you to ensure that you have the resources to accomplish all of these goals.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Source: U.S. Department of HCA
