[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 21, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H2808]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          GIVE US THEIR NAMES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, one of the most disturbing aspects of 
the unfolding scandal involving the misuse of the IRS is what can only 
be described as an insatiable appetite for names, names, and more 
names.
  Conservative groups--and only conservative groups--seeking to 
organize under section 501 were subjected to pages of intrusive and 
irrelevant questions but with a common theme: give us their names. Give 
us the names of your volunteers. Give us the names of your donors and 
your family members and your business associates. Give us the names of 
speakers and audience participants in your meetings.
  One man applying to form a group to educate teenagers in 
constitutional principles was told to turn over the names of his 
students. As he told a reporter, Can you imagine my responsibility to 
parents if I disclosed the names of their children to the IRS?
  This tactic was not limited to new applications. The venerable 
Leadership Institute, which has been schooling young people in 
constitutional principles for 40 years, was put through a year-long 
audit. The IRS wasn't only interested in financial information, they 
wanted the names of the students and their college interns and the 
names of anyone who had subsequently hired these young people. And when 
the IRS wasn't demanding the names of ordinary Americans or asking what 
they were reading or thinking or saying, in some cases applicants were 
given names and told to reveal what they knew about these people.
  Mr. Speaker, these are facts that are undisputed by the 
administration and its apologists. For a period of more than 2 years, 
these questions were put to Americans whose political opinions had been 
singled out by one of the most powerful and feared agencies of the 
Federal Government.
  What I would like to know is why? Why did the IRS demand lists of 
names of thousands of Americans whose only common characteristic is 
that they disagreed with this administration? Where are these lists 
now? With whom were they shared? Who wanted to know these names? What 
possible use would the IRS have to track the names of high school 
students who simply wanted to learn about their Constitution? But most 
importantly, what were these names used for and what are they being 
used for?
  I don't have an answer to these questions, but I find their 
implications deeply disturbing; and they must be answered during the 
course of the investigations now underway, and they must be answered in 
full and with certainty.

                              {time}  1030

  I cannot conceive of the reasons why the Federal Government would be 
so interested in compiling such lists; but we know for a fact that they 
were, and that fact is undisputed. What we don't know is why; and 
knowing the answer to that question and the other questions raised by 
this undisputed fact is absolutely essential to a society that values 
its freedom of speech, its freedom of assembly, its freedom of press, 
and its freedom of conscience.
  We know the ancillary effect of these illegal demands. They dried up 
donations to these conservative groups. They heavily suppressed 
volunteer activities. We know some lists were leaked to liberal 
publications like The Huffington Post and ProPublica. What we don't 
know is what was the direct purpose of gathering these names.
  The administration's spokesman this weekend said the law is 
irrelevant and called it a distraction. Well, on the contrary, this 
strikes at the very foundation of a free society, the rule of law, and 
the right of the people to question the policies of their government 
without fear of retribution or intimidation.
  Seventy-five years ago, Winston Churchill warned of a ``state of 
society where men may not speak their minds, where children denounced 
their parents to the police, where a businessman or small shopkeeper 
ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinions.''
  If it is possible that we have taken even a single step down the road 
that leads to such places, then that situation should occupy our full 
and undistracted attention until it is fully and completely rectified, 
new safeguards are erected against its recurrence, and those 
responsible are held fully accountable.

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