[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 7393-7394]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          WHITE HOUSE SCANDALS

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this last weekend White House adviser 
Dan Pfeiffer visited all five Sunday morning talk shows. What he tried 
to do there was to defend the Obama administration's handling of the 
various scandals we are all too familiar with. Unfortunately for the 
President, I think he only made things worse.
  For example, he said President Obama's whereabouts on the night of 
the Benghazi terrorist attack were irrelevant. That is a strange use of 
the word. Where the President is when a terrorist attack kills four 
American citizens in Libya, to call that irrelevant strikes me as an 
odd choice of words.
  He was also asked whether it is illegal for the IRS to target 
individuals and organizations for political reasons. Again, he said, 
``It is irrelevant.'' Strange choice of words. In other words, if the 
American people were hoping that this White House would finally provide 
straight answers to basic questions, they were once again disappointed.
  Let's review the facts starting with Benghazi, as the Senator from 
Nebraska was just talking about.
  Eight months, of course, have passed since four brave Americans were 
killed by terrorists linked to al-Qaida. Eight months have passed since 
the Obama administration blamed the attack on a spontaneous 
demonstration incited by some amateur YouTube video.
  Is it irrelevant that we don't know where the President of the United 
States was on the night of the attack or what he did or did not do to 
come to the aid of these four brave Americans who were at risk of 
losing their lives and did, in fact, lose their lives? Is it irrelevant 
that members of the Obama administration deliberately misled, time and 
time again, the American people about this act of terrorism? Is it 
irrelevant that Ambassador Susan Rice was blaming the massacre on a 
YouTube video the very same day Libya's President was calling it a 
preplanned terrorist attack? Is it irrelevant that the former deputy to 
the late Ambassador Chris Stevens has said that everybody at the U.S. 
Embassy believed from the start that it was a terrorist attack? 
Finally, is it irrelevant that this former deputy, Gregory Hicks, was 
punished by the State Department for cooperating with congressional 
investigators so the truth could get out?
  That is a strange choice of words--``irrelevant.'' I don't think the 
American people believe that is irrelevant--any of these facts. In 
fact, I think what we can only conclude is that the culture the White 
House, unfortunately, has created is one where coverups, misdirection, 
prevarication and dissembling are OK, not being straight with the 
American people.
  No wonder the American people doubt their leadership in Washington 
and particularly in the White House if the White House is going to 
create a culture in which these sorts of coverups are OK or, in the 
words of Dan Pfeiffer, simply irrelevant. When the American people 
can't trust the White House to be honest with them--and refuses to 
accept responsibility for their mistakes--it is not irrelevant.
  As for the IRS scandal, some people have tried to dismiss the 
targeting of various conservative groups as a rogue operation managed 
by a few renegade staffers in the Cincinnati office. Yet the more we 
learn about this scandal, the bigger it seems.
  Anybody who has been around a big bureaucracy--and certainly the IRS 
qualifies as a big bureaucracy--knows that when you ask the bureaucrats 
something, the easiest answer is no because they don't get in trouble 
for saying no. They may not be very helpful or responsive, but they 
don't get in trouble.
  What strikes me as so bizarre about this idea that there are a number 
of free agents in Cincinnati who decided to cook this up on their own 
is it really goes against the grain of everything we know about 
bureaucracies. Why in the world would they take the initiative to

[[Page 7394]]

target political speech unless they thought they either had the 
explicit or the implicit approval of their higher-ups? It just doesn't 
make any sense otherwise.
  Last week one Cincinnati IRS employee told the Washington Post--and I 
think this has the ring of truth--that ``everything comes from the top. 
We don't have any authority to make those decisions without someone 
signing off on them. There has to be a directive.'' Now, that sounds 
like the bureaucracy that I know and am familiar with.
  So I would like to ask the White House if it is irrelevant that 
America's tax collection agency was turned into a political attack 
machine, deciding that they were the ones who could police political 
speech and activity protected by the First Amendment to the 
Constitution? Is it irrelevant that an agency with the power to destroy 
people's lives adopted the tactics of a dictator? Is it irrelevant that 
senior IRS officials learned about these abuses at least 2 years ago 
and lied to Congress and the American people when we asked them about 
them?
  When I got reports from the King Street Patriots and True the Vote in 
Houston, TX, and the Waco and San Antonio tea parties in 2011 and 2012 
about some of the tactics they were being exposed to, I and other 
Members of the Senate wrote to the Commissioner of the IRS Mr. Shulman, 
and Mr. Miller, the Acting Commissioner, and they failed to disclose 
what we now know is the truth. Senator Hatch, the distinguished ranking 
member of the Finance Committee, yesterday told Mr. Miller that was a 
lie by omission at the very least. Certainly it was not telling the 
whole truth to the Members of Congress, whose responsibility is to 
provide oversight to the American people of the IRS and of the Federal 
Government. I don't think it is irrelevant when IRS Commissioner 
Douglas Shulman categorically denied these abuses in sworn testimony 
before the House Ways and Means Committee in March of 2012.
  Furthermore, I don't think it is irrelevant that IRS officials may 
have committed criminal offenses. I realize that is a serious statement 
and charge to make, but we know this morning that the director of the 
Internal Revenue Service division overseeing nonprofit organizations 
has taken the Fifth Amendment when asked for sworn testimony by a 
congressional oversight committee.
  To refresh everybody's memory, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. 
Constitution means that you cannot be compelled to incriminate yourself 
and possibly expose yourself by virtue of your own testimony to a 
criminal prosecution. That is what taking the Fifth Amendment is.
  While she is within her rights to take the Fifth Amendment, if she 
has a credible fear of prosecution for violating the criminal laws, I 
believe this elevates this scandal to a new level.
  Finally, I would suggest to our friends at the White House that it is 
not irrelevant that a Texas businesswoman named Catherine Engelbrecht 
was targeted not only by the IRS but by the FBI, the ATF, and OSHA 
after she founded a pair of organizations in Houston, TX, known as the 
King Street Patriots and True the Vote.
  I think most Americans would agree that all of this information is 
quite relevant, quite reprehensible, and something that Congress ought 
to, on a bipartisan basis, investigate.
  I congratulate the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max 
Baucus, a Democrat--not a member of my political party--and Senator 
Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, for the 
bipartisan way they have begun the investigation into this IRS scandal. 
What we all recognize, Republicans and Democrats alike, is that this is 
a threat to the public's trust in government institutions and that this 
culture of intimidation is not something we can stand for, using the 
extraordinary power of the Federal Government to target American 
citizens for exercising their constitutional rights. Indeed, if 
President Obama wants to know why the American people's trust in the 
Federal Government has plummeted to an all-time low, all he has to do 
is look at these two scandals and consider how the administration is 
handling them.
  When government officials consistently mislead, stonewall, and abuse 
their power, people take notice, they don't forget, and the day of 
reckoning will surely come.
  Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. It is my understanding that I have 10 minutes to speak. 
Will you confirm if that is correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

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