Mike Thompson: “Mr. President, it seems at this time of year every year we tend to go out of our way to criticize the Internal Revenue…”

“Mr. President, it seems at this time of year every year we tend to go out of our way to criticize the Internal Revenue Service, but I think part of the reason for that is that sometimes it seems to take so much to get their attention. As the Presiding Officer knows, the General Accounting Office has a list of high-risk agencies which they set forth as agencies that are more prone to fraud, waste and abuse, and mismanagement. The IRS has been on that list now for 6 years in a row, and we had hearings last week in order to find out what they intended to do about it because not only do they have the normal problems that we all hear about and complain about every year, it seems now that in their attempt to modernize their computer system, which is totally outdated; they are working on 1960's technology, but in an attempt to do something about that they have spent billions of dollars and canceled one program after another and are not making substantial progress into getting into the 20th century much less the 21st century. We also found out that the Internal Revenue Service cannot stand an audit.”