The People's Night

Floor Speech

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Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank my friend from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, if you are a taxpayer and if you become subjected to an IRS audit, you have got to prove and justify what you have submitted to the IRS. If you tell the IRS, ``I don't really have those documents. They were destroyed, and there is nothing I can do. Let's just move along,'' I don't think most IRS agents are going to accept that, and I think the taxpayer would likely find himself in hot water.

I think it is really unacceptable that the IRS seems to think it could operate under a totally different standard than the standard that it imposes on American taxpayers.

We have been going through this now since 2013 with Lois Lerner and the targeting scandal in our trying to get more information. Last year, before Congress, John Koskinen, the IRS Commissioner, said: We are going to produce Lois Lerner's emails. We will produce all of them. We have nothing to hide.

A couple of months later, he said: Actually, most of Lois Lerner's emails were destroyed because, you see, they are held on these backup tapes, and we recycle the backup tapes. We destroy the tapes, so there is just nothing we can do here. We are just going to move along, and we are not going to participate in any meaningful way with your investigation.

Most Americans didn't accept that, and it really was not worth the paper it was printed on in terms of an excuse. It was, obviously, much different than what the IRS would impose on a taxpayer, but it was even more than that. It was more than just a weak excuse; it was false.

Once Koskinen said that the emails were destroyed--guess what?--the Inspector General for Tax Administration in the Treasury Department did basic due diligence and said: Do you know what? I am going to check to see whether Koskinen is telling the truth.

What did the IG do? He drove out to West Virginia where they have the warehouse of all of the backup tapes. What did they find? The Lois Lerner emails on the backup tapes. They were there the whole time. Now, they have pulled thousands and thousands of Lois Lerner emails.

These are emails that are, in many cases, different than the emails that the IRS begrudgingly produced to Congress and to the American people. This is a major, major issue. Of course, there is the targeting, but then there are the lengths that the IRS has gone to stymie Congress' investigation.

Just this week in Federal court, they are fighting Judicial Watch. They don't want to turn over even these new emails that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration provided to the IRS.

They are saying: We can't turn them over to you now in the course of the litigation. We are not going to turn them over to Congress because we need to check to see whether there are any duplicates from the emails that we have already turned over.

Really? Who cares? Give us the emails. Give the American people the truth. What they are trying to do is to stonewall and drag this out as long as they can, hoping that the American people will forget about it. Then, basically, they get away scot-free, with nobody in their organization being held accountable.

I think it is a test of this institution here in the Congress about whether somebody like Commissioner Koskinen is going to be held to account for misleading Congress, for providing false information to Congress.

The fact of the matter is, if an American taxpayer were hauled in front of a Federal grand jury or a Federal court and if he gave testimony like that, that was not true, he would face consequences. You can bet your bottom dollar.

I think the IRS is kind of the grossest example that we have in Washington of really a fundamental problem with how our government operates, which is that the people who work and operate in and around Washington, D.C.--6 of the 10 wealthiest counties in our country are now suburbs of Washington, D.C. We are not producing shale here. We don't have technology--nothing--in Washington.

It is all because of the power and growth of government, so people inside the beltway are not held accountable. You have people at the IRS, and you have people at the EPA, and you have people in all of these different agencies. Essentially, they are allowed to operate under a lower standard of conduct than what an American taxpayer or a citizen would be allowed or permitted to do by the government. That is unacceptable.

I think that this IRS issue is as important a government accountability issue as we are facing in this Congress. I think it is a test for the House as to whether we are going to be serious about this and hold these IRS officials accountable.

I am glad my friend from North Carolina had the time here today. I think it was very productive to listen to some of the other Members. I just want the American people to know that I am committed to getting to the bottom of this and to holding these people accountable not only for the targeting, but for obstructing the investigation when it has been obstructed over and over again.

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