IRS Scandal

Floor Speech

Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I am very much appreciative of the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Nevada having this very important discussion.

Washington tends to operate inside a bubble where one can easily forget just how much Main Street America is hurting economically, how many Americans feel their rights are being threatened, and how many fear we are not going to leave behind a better country for our children.

That is why it is so important we stay connected to our constituents. It is why I travel home almost every weekend, hold telephone and online townhalls from my Washington office, and try to read my mail, which is so very important.

In a recent townhall I answered some difficult questions on the issues we are facing as a nation. However, one of the toughest questions that was posed was not about a specific policy issue. Instead, it was when I was asked: How do we fix the mess in Washington?

I answered, in part, that transparency and accountability would go a long way to restoring faith in Washington. That was before the Benghazi controversy escalated. Then news of the IRS scandal broke. Almost immediately after that we learned the Department of Justice had obtained the private phone records of dozens of Associated Press reporters.

This is the opposite of what we need to do to fix the problems in Washington. These scandals move us in the wrong direction.

It is hard to pick which one of these I find the most troubling, but I want to focus on the IRS scandal because targeting political groups, singling them out for additional scrutiny simply because you disagree with their ideological views is wrong on every level.

Dismissing this massive overreach as if it is just the acts of a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, as some have tried to do since the onset, is not taking leadership nor is it seeking to hold the agency accountable.

We now know the Acting IRS Commissioner knew of these abuses for at least a year, and officials at Treasury and as high up as the Chief of Staff at the White House were briefed before the leak despite the repeated claims that the administration learned about it through news reports.

We know it was not just Cincinnati. IRS officials at the agency's Washington headquarters also sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors, and progressive groups, who operated the same way, were not subjected to this type of harassment.

On top of all this there is real concern that IRS officials may have lied to Congress in an effort to cover up the agency's misdeeds. Yesterday before the Finance Committee the former head of the agency who was in charge at the time of these abuses claimed this was not ``politically motivated,'' while at the same time he said he did not know how the targeting happened.

Along with this impressive double-talk, he refused to apologize for the abuses that went on under his watch.

Somebody has to be accountable. This is not a time for excuses; it is a time for leadership. The President needs to fully cooperate with the congressional investigations into the IRS scandal.

Last week, our entire caucus sent a letter to the White House that demands at least this much from the administration. Washington's credibility--what is left of it--is on the line. The American people deserve to know what actions will be taken to ensure those who made these decisions at the IRS will be held accountable.

The good news is people on both sides of the aisle--Republicans and Democrats--are rightfully outraged. We are going to get to the bottom of this. People will be held accountable. At the very least those engaging in these unethical actions need to be fired. If they broke the law, they need to be prosecuted.

This scandal gives the already maligned IRS a black eye. It reinforces people's worst fears about Washington--that those in power will use any means necessary to maintain that power.

Keep in mind this agency will be responsible for implementing and enforcing key provisions of the President's health care law, a law that a majority of Arkansans do not support. If these types of abuses are allowed to go unchecked, what kind of bullying will go on when that implementation begins, especially in light of the fact that the official who was in charge of the unit that targeted conservative groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care law?

Everyone needs to be treated fairly under the law. Clearly, there are employees at the IRS who do not subscribe to this principle. There must be zero tolerance for the actions of those individuals.

Until we change the culture in Washington, we will not

gain the confidence of the American people. The onus is on us. Washington as a whole--the White House, Congress, and every civil servant--has to remember whom we work for and to whom we are accountable. The actions of the IRS, along with the other scandals plaguing DC, only move us further from the goalpost, not closer.

I yield back.

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