[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 37 (Thursday, February 29, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S1057]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Nomination of Marjorie A. Rollinson

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate will vote on 
the confirmation of Marjorie A. Rollinson to serve as Chief Counsel of 
the Internal Revenue Service, and I want to make a few key points about 
her.
  First, she has exactly the right experience to do the job. She has 
decades of tax and management experience in both the private sector and 
the public sector. She spent several years at the IRS Office of Chief 
Counsel. She has also been the Technical Deputy Associate Chief Counsel 
and the Associate Chief Counsel--both times on international tax 
issues--so she has real expertise on these issues. That is a big reason 
she got bipartisan support in the Finance Committee.
  And this is a crucial time for the Agency in terms of implementing 
and enforcing tax laws, and I will just give colleagues a couple of 
quick examples that I know Members feel strongly about, and I would 
like to start with energy.

  One of the big implementation jobs in the works--something that I 
have been very involved in and I know Members on both sides have--deals 
with a key part of the Inflation Reduction Act, specifically the area 
of incentives for energy production. This was the centerpiece of the 
Finance Committee's Clean Energy for America Act, a bill that I first 
introduced in 2015.
  What motivated that legislation--and I see a number of my Finance 
Committee colleagues here--is we said that, for the future, to tackle 
climate in the right way, we had to set aside the old system of picking 
winners and losers and just propping up the old, carbon-intensive 
technologies and, in effect, go to a new system--a brandnew system--of 
technological neutrality--in effect, giving all the energy sources in 
America the opportunity to compete and compete in a way where there are 
no mandates--in effect, private sector style competition--with one 
goal: reducing carbon emissions.
  The Senate Finance Committee--and there are several members on the 
floor right now--understands this. Our committee had never done 
anything like this in 100 years--to create this kind of market 
incentive, a market incentive to actually reduce carbon emissions.
  Now, the administration has been working through, right now, a number 
of challenging rules. Technology neutrality is the next big one for 
them. It is essential to get this guidance out there so that taxpayers 
and clean energy producers can take full advantage of the law and, 
particularly, be part of this new system, this new approach, that we 
call technological neutrality. It will give every Member of this body--
and I see additional members of the Finance Committee coming in--an 
opportunity to be part of this very new world in energy, and Ms. 
Rollinson will play a chief role as IRS Chief Counsel once she is 
confirmed.
  If she is confirmed, she is going to play another important role in 
terms of tax enforcement. Every member of the Finance Committee feels 
strongly about making sure audits are dealt with in a responsible way. 
We want to do it by the book so it is not just low-income families who 
get audited. Everybody who is skirting the law should be subject to 
equal treatment under the law, and we ought to crack down on the 
sophisticated, wealthy tax cheats who pay for the best tax lawyers and 
accountants. It is a matter of basic fairness with respect to audits, 
and Ms. Rollinson will handle that in the right fashion.
  I will close by saying I think Ms. Rollinson is an excellent pick for 
the job. This is a crucial time for this position. They are going to be 
implementing a very new energy world, a world based on technological 
neutrality and marketplace competition, and they are going to have the 
responsibility of ensuring the enforcement of tax law in a fair way, 
particularly as it relates to audits. That is why she got bipartisan 
support in the Finance Committee. It is why she deserves bipartisan 
support today.
  I urge my colleagues now to approve the Rollinson nomination.
  I yield the floor.