[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 15, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H2232-H2233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       IRS EMAIL TRANSPARENCY ACT

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
pass the bill (H.R. 1152) to prohibit officers and employees of the 
Internal Revenue Service from using personal email accounts to conduct 
official business, as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                               H.R. 1152

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``IRS Email Transparency 
     Act''.

     SEC. 2. IRS EMPLOYEES PROHIBITED FROM USING PERSONAL EMAIL 
                   ACCOUNTS FOR OFFICIAL BUSINESS.

       No officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service may 
     use a personal email account to conduct any official business 
     of the Government.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) each 
will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.


                             General Leave

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend 
their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 1152, 
currently under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I want to congratulate and thank Mr. Marchant of Texas, a member of 
the Ways and Means Committee, for bringing this issue to the floor. I 
want to thank the gentleman from Georgia, who is the ranking member of 
the subcommittee, for partnering, along with other members of the 
minority on the Ways and Means Committee, on this.
  This is a perfect example of Congress' seeing an abuse that was made 
and rectifying it, and that is why these laws are here.
  For the purpose of explaining what this particular bill does, I yield 
such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Marchant).
  Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your 
leadership in helping advance the IRS Email Transparency Act.
  Mr. Speaker, we have an important responsibility in Congress to 
protect American taxpayers. That is what our constituents sent us here 
to do. I believe we have the opportunity to do that today. By moving 
forward this bill, we put safeguards in place for taxpayers, and we 
bring greater transparency and accountability to the IRS.
  H.R. 1152 is a clear, straightforward bill that will prohibit the 
IRS' officers and employees from using personal email accounts for 
official IRS business--a very commonsense thing.
  This bill came as a result of the Ways and Means Committee's 
investigation into the IRS' targeting of taxpayers based on their 
political beliefs. Many of those wrongly targeted were in my district 
in Texas. The underlying issue of H.R. 1152 is about finding ways to 
fix the problem and ensuring that such abuses never happen again. This 
is something that will impact all Americans.
  One of the abuses the committee discovered in our investigation was 
that some IRS employees used their personal, nonsecure email accounts 
to conduct official IRS business. In doing so, they also disclosed 
confidential taxpayer information.

                              {time}  1400

  Lois Lerner, a former IRS official at the center of the agency's 
targeting scandal, routinely conducted official business involving 
taxpayer information on her personal email account. If that is not bad 
enough, nothing on her personal email is subject to official 
recordkeeping, which conveniently keeps taxpayer information outside 
the orbit of proper security.
  Such reckless behavior by the IRS breaches the trust between the 
American people and their government. This is wrong in principle and 
has failed in practice.
  Currently, the IRS employee manual only says that sensitive but 
unclassified data can't be emailed outside the IRS network, but it says 
nothing about an outright prohibition. In other words, it is bad 
practice, but it is not prohibited. It clearly didn't stop Lois Lerner 
from betraying the confidence of the American taxpayer.
  This bill makes it against the law for IRS employees to share 
confidential tax information on their personal email account. As I said 
at the outset, Congress has a responsibility to protect taxpayers. Just 
avoiding a repeat of past failures cannot be our ambition.
  So let's put commonsense safeguards in place, shine the light of 
transparency on the IRS, and provide greater accountability to the 
American people. The IRS Email Transparency Act does just that.
  Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1152, the IRS Email 
Transparency Act.
  In 2012, the Internal Revenue Service prohibited employees from using 
personal email accounts for governmental or official purposes. This 
bill simply makes this commonsense rule a Federal law.
  H.R. 1152 responds to the investigation into the processing of tax-
exempt applications. This investigation started nearly 2 years ago, in 
May 2013. To date, the agency has spent more than $20 million to 
produce more than 1.3 million pages of documents, including 78,000 
emails from Ms. Lois Lerner.
  Mr. Speaker, to date, there has not been one shred of evidence 
produced to support the Republican claim that the processing of 
applications was politically motivated or intended to target the 
President's political enemies. The inspector general even stated that 
no one outside of the agency was involved in setting the standards for 
processing tax-exempt applications. The delays experienced by groups 
were the result of incompetence at the agency in the Exempt 
Organizations Division.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Marchant) and my 
Republican colleagues for bringing this bill to the floor today.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam), the chairman of the subcommittee.
  Mr. ROSKAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.
  One of the questions I get at home a lot is: How did the Lois Lerner 
scandal happen? How did it come to pass that that happened, and how do 
you make sure that it doesn't happen again?
  Mr. Marchant's bill doesn't deal necessarily with Lois Lerner 1.0, 
but it deals with Lois Lerner 2.0. So it is a prohibition against this 
very cavalier attitude that we have seen coming from the Internal 
Revenue Service, and

[[Page H2233]]

that is to be cavalier about taxpayer information. It hasn't just been 
leaked through emails. It has been leaked in other sources and in other 
ways and shapes and iterations, but the effect is the same, and the 
effect is devastating.
  So this takes away any ambiguity that somebody can use their own 
private email account and begin to do official activity. If that is the 
bright line that is necessary, that is the bright line that Mr. 
Marchant's bill creates.
  So what we want to make sure is that we do more than simply say Lois 
doesn't work here anymore, as if that is the remedy, but to actually 
change these underlying policies, reclaim this authority, and make sure 
that this can never happen again.
  Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Speaker, I don't have any other speakers.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may 
consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Marchant) for the purpose of 
closing.
  Mr. MARCHANT. Mr. Speaker, today is the day that we should declare 
that the IRS cannot take our personal tax information and put it on 
their private email account so that it could be subject to discovery by 
other people and people who will not observe and revere that 
information.
  I urge passage today of H.R. 1152.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Denham). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) that the House 
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 1152, as amended.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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