Jack Kingston: “I know the gentleman has done a lot of study on the U.S. Department of Education, how big it is, but before we get to…”

“I know the gentleman has done a lot of study on the U.S. Department of Education, how big it is, but before we get to that I want to mention another bureaucracy that has 111,000 employees, and that is the IRS. Listen to this story that was from an article written by Dan Gifford in Insight magazine, April 29, 1996: A man's brother was killed in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The IRS demanded that he pay $64 million to them because they had guessed that he had received about $11 million in a settlement. They wanted $64 million from the guy because they had guessed he had received $11 million, and the fact was that he had never received one dime for the settlement at the time the IRS wanted it. Another story said there was a 10-year-old girl, the daughter of a man, and the IRS claimed he owed $1,000 in taxes, $600 paper route savings since she had a little paper route, $600 in her savings were seized by the IRS. This is a 10-year-old girl. I have an 11-year-old son. This is somebody who rides bicycles. So the IRS seizes $600 in a paper route savings and would not give it back to her until her father paid the $1,000 on taxes that he owed. It is just absurd. It is a bureaucracy out of control and out of touch.”