[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 195 (Tuesday, December 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S7390]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             PRIVACY REFORM

  Madam President, now on a final matter, the Senate will soon vote on 
an attempt by some of our Democratic colleagues to unwind an important 
privacy reform the Treasury Department enacted earlier this year.
  We need to stand up for privacy, stand up for the First Amendment, 
and reject the Democrats' resolution.
  The question at hand is whether the IRS should have special power to 
demand that certain nonprofit organizations hand over the list of their 
contributors.
  This raises the question: Why should the IRS have this private 
information? Is it for accounting purposes? No. The regulation requires 
tax-exempt nonprofits to maintain books, but individual donations are 
not tax deductible so there aren't accounting reasons why the IRS would 
need to track donors.
  Is it for transparency purposes? No. The personal information in 
question is not part of any public inspection requirement. In fact, the 
IRS is required to redact this information when releasing a nonprofit's 
public tax filings. The guidance does nothing to affect the information 
that is publicly available.
  So why does the IRS need to stockpile this information? For 
safekeeping? Hardly.
  Several years ago, the IRS had to settle a lawsuit. A worker broke 
the law and leaked an unredacted copy of a group's confidential forms. 
Of course, that information ended up in a leftwing organization on the 
opposite side of the issue.
  A few years before that, California, which had begun demanding its 
own copy of this private information, accidentally published the 
private information of donors to over 1,000 nonprofits registered with 
that State.
  These aren't isolated incidents. They are part of a disturbingly 
hostile climate for certain kinds of political expression and for the 
free exchange of ideas.
  We have seen angry activist mobs deal out personal harassment and 
professional sabotage to individuals with whom they have a 
disagreement. We have seen the last administration's IRS focus hostile 
treatment on certain organizations whose political views ran afoul of 
the bureaucrat's own opinions.
  This is the backdrop which makes Secretary Mnuchin's pro-privacy 
decision so important. The Democrats want to overrule Secretary 
Mnuchin's guidance. They want the IRS to resume packing filing cabinets 
full of the names of Americans who support different causes--even 
though they can't say why.
  That is today. What about tomorrow? Forty-five Senate Democrats are 
already signed on to a more sweeping piece of legislation known as the 
DISCLOSE Act, which would amplify and expand this chilling effect in 
numerous other ways.
  For one thing, this bill would cut out the middle man of the leaky 
IRS and enable direct ideological harassment, increasing disclosure of 
this private information straight to the public. That is just one 
example. It would also give the FEC more power to regulate Americas' 
speech about important issues and many public officials.
  So get ready to hear a lot of lofty rhetoric about restoring 
democracy from the Democratic leader in the House and her allies here 
in the Senate, but underneath that rhetoric, get ready for legislation 
that will do more to undermine our constitutional freedoms and chill 
their exercise than any other bill I can think of in recent memory.
  Let's not walk down this road. Let's not chill Americans' exercise of 
the First Amendment. Let's defend these freedoms today and stay 
vigilant tomorrow.

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