[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 25 (Wednesday, March 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1025]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            CONGRESS MUST TAKE ACTION NOW TO STOP IRS ABUSE

  (Mrs. CHENOWETH asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Speaker, I learned as a child from reading the 
Bible that tax collectors have never been popular, and that, I suspect, 
will never change. But I do not think that that can explain the growing 
hostility of more and more taxpayers towards the IRS.
  Now, I know that our liberal friends will dismiss that out of hand, 
saying how easy it is to bash the IRS. But they demonstrate in doing 
this that once again they simply do not care how good decent American 
taxpayers are treated by the IRS. We were elected to care and to do 
something about this runaway agency.
  The fact is people are unhappy with the IRS for a very good reason. 
There is clearly an abuse of power. I am talking about honest, average 
Americans facing an audit, who make an honest mistake and then are 
treated as criminals by the IRS, while the courts turn their back on 
the fact that these people deserve due process. Mr. Speaker, we must, 
in the Congress, do something about this abuse.

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