[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 7392-7393]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         ONGOING CONTROVERSIES

  Mrs. FISCHER. Madam President, I rise today to discuss a number of 
ongoing controversies of national importance, including the IRS's 
unfair treatment of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, 
the secret gathering of journalists' phone records by the Department of 
Justice, and the administration's response to the attack on the U.S. 
consulate in Benghazi.
  Both the House and the Senate have held hearings with the former and 
acting IRS Commissioners, as well as the Treasury Department's 
Inspector General for Tax Administration, who conducted an internal 
audit and authored the report revealing the pattern of government abuse 
within the IRS tax exempt division.
  While I am pleased that Congress is judiciously exercising its 
oversight powers, very few questions have been answered. The pattern of 
inconsistent explanations continues. We still do not know who exactly 
initiated the practice of wrongfully targeting conservative groups.
  Ironically, the Acting IRS Commissioner, Steven Miller, testified 
under oath that there was absolutely no political motivation behind the 
practice; however, Mr. Miller could not identify the names of the 
individuals whose motives he was supposedly vouching for. How is that 
even possible? Nebraskans know better than to buy that bill of goods.
  We still do not know why this abusive policy was implemented in the 
first place. IRS officials have maintained that the extra scrutiny 
given to conservative groups was an attempt to deal with an influx of 
applications. As a number of fact checkers and media outlets have 
noted, that surge in applications did not happen until well after the 
targeting began. The reasoning for the practice put forth by the IRS 
simply does not align with the facts.
  We still do not know why the IRS believed it had the right to release 
confidential data which it had wrongly requested in the first place. 
They released that to third parties with adversarial interests to those 
conservative groups in question. The progressive publication ProPublica 
admitted it obtained from the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked 
confidential tax forms from nine organizations.
  All of the groups whose records were improperly released were 
conservative. Why did the IRS leak these records? What was their goal? 
Why did only conservative organizations have their confidential 
information leaked? Why did the White House senior staff, including the 
White House Counsel and the White House Chief of Staff, fail to inform 
the President of this egregious government overreach by the IRS?
  Former Special Counsel to President Clinton, Lanny Davis, recently 
wrote an opinion piece in the Hill:

       With all due respect to someone who has impeccable legal 
     credentials, if she did have such foreknowledge and didn't 
     inform the President immediately, I respectfully suggest Ms. 
     Ruemmler is in the wrong job and that she should resign.

  Politico recently reported--the story keeps changing:

       The White House explanation of what it knew about the IRS 
     story ahead of the first press reports on the controversy 
     shifted once again Thursday.

  Let me repeat that, ``shifted once again.''
  It seems that some folks from the White House cannot get their facts 
straight. Why? The White House Press Secretary admitted yesterday that 
officials in the White House discussed how and when the IRS would tell 
the public the agency had been targeting conservative groups. The 
eventual public disclosure was made by IRS Tax Exempt and Government 
Entities Division Director Lois Lerner, who revealed the pattern of 
government abuse with an intentionally planted question at an otherwise 
little-noticed Washington, DC, lawyers conference.
  It is outrageous that despite numerous congressional inquiries asking 
the IRS for answers in both public hearings and formal letters, the IRS 
would first reveal the truth through a charade of a ``planted'' 
question. Then Lerner went on to earn herself a ``bushel of 
Pinocchios'' from the Washington Post fact checker for her series of 
misstatements and ``weasley wording.''
  Whatever happened to the President's worthy goals of promoting the 
most accountable, the most transparent, the most open administration

[[Page 7393]]

in history? I do not appreciate being misled, and Nebraskans do not 
either.
  Regarding the secret collection of the Department of Justice of over 
100 Associated Press journalist phone records, two key questions 
remain. Why didn't the Department of Justice ask the Associated Press 
to voluntarily cooperate before issuing those subpoenas as the law 
requires? And why did the Department of Justice fail to abide by the 
law and inform the Associated Press that the records were subpoenaed, 
denying them the opportunity to appeal that heavy-handed play?
  Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson put it well:

       The Obama administration has no business rummaging through 
     journalists' phone records, perusing their e-mails and 
     tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from 
     gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn't chilling, 
     it's just plain cold.

  But, once again, the overreach does not stop there. Recent news has 
surfaced that a Fox News journalist was criminally investigated for 
doing his job, lawfully soliciting information from a government 
source. The Post describes the investigation in vivid detail. They used 
security badge access records to track the reporter's comings and 
goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court 
affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department 
security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They 
obtained a search warrant for the reporter's personal e-mails.
  This assault on the First Amendment is unacceptable and the 
intimidation of reporters through unnecessary criminal investigations 
and excessive surveillance raises serious questions about the freedom 
of the press. The President and the Department of Justice have yet to 
come forward with credible answers. The American people are still 
waiting.
  Finally, I would like to briefly touch on the tragic attack on our 
consulate in Benghazi. Much attention has been paid to the internal 
White House e-mails and changes to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's talking 
points explaining the source of the attacks.
  I believe a key question still remains to be answered: Why for 2 
weeks did the administration propagate the tale that it was a YouTube 
video-inspired attack when officials knew almost immediately it was 
carried out by affiliates of al-Qaida? That is a pretty simple 
question.
  Why were the American people told an anti-Islam YouTube video 
prompted the attacks when it was known it was not? No one has answered 
this very basic question.
  Instead of providing answers to these questions, a top White House 
adviser has impugned the integrity of those seeking the truth by 
decrying persistent questioning as a ``witch hunt.'' It is time for the 
President to put politics aside, demand accountability from his staff, 
and step up and do his job.
  Congress is doing its part by conducting serious oversight hearings 
on both the IRS overreach and the Benghazi attack. Yet critical 
government witnesses--such as the IRS Tax Exempt and Government 
Entities Division Director Lois Lerner--refuse to cooperate, insisting 
on pleading the Fifth Amendment during hearings to set the record 
straight.
  It is up to the President. It is up to the President to transform 
this culture of arrogance and change the above-the-law attitude that 
seems to have a grip over his departments and agencies. Ignorance, 
willful or otherwise, is not going to cut it anymore. We simply cannot 
afford to have a President on the sidelines. This unraveling saga of 
government gone wild demonstrates exactly one of two things: either the 
height of government incompetence or gross abuse of power. Rather than 
sending surrogates out on the Sunday talk shows to claim ``the law is 
irrelevant'' with regard to that IRS overreach, I call on the President 
to work with Congress to build back the people's trust.
  This includes taking responsibility for the actions of those working 
within the executive branch, enforcing the laws, and removing all those 
responsible for this disturbing pattern of government overreach.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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