[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6729]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                THE IRS

  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, there is no room for politics at the 
IRS. Senator McConnell is right. Senator Reid is right. They have both 
addressed it. The issue is the IRS has to be completely neutral in 
politics, but they do have to go after organizations and individuals 
who are not abiding by the rules, whether they are right, left, center 
or no ideology at all.
  I remember during the Bush years we saw the IRS targeting liberal 
churches. It was awful. They were harassing them and forcing them to 
show that they were nonprofits. Now we see the IRS has been targeting 
tea party groups. Whether they are targeting right or left, that is 
wrong, and anyone doing it, frankly, needs to get another job because 
that is against the law. We cannot have politically motivated audits or 
harassing people, whatever their politics may be.
  Here is what we do need. We do need a fair IRS that definitely looks 
at whether organizations, be they left or right, are truly deserving of 
tax-exempt status--that is important--but not targeting one group or 
another. We also know the targeting of the tea party groups took place 
while a Bush appointee was the head of the IRS, probably--perhaps was 
quite unaware.
  The bottom line is people at the top have to be held accountable. I 
agree with that. He should have known what was going on. But there is 
no room for this. I do believe there has to be serious action taken at 
the personnel level; otherwise, people will just go ho-hum.
  No, not ho-hum; you cannot use a position to harass people because of 
their politics, regardless of where their politics may lie.

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