On the recordSeptember 5, 2017
I appreciate the chairman yielding me the time, the ranking member for being here, and also Mr. Roskam and Mr. Crowley, both for their sponsorship and cosponsorship of this legislation. H.R. 1843, the Clyde-Hirsch-Sowers RESPECT Act is one of those things that you really, at times, have a hard time understanding why we are debating on the floor of the House. It is that much common sense. And as my grandmother used to say: Common sense is not common. So here we are. If anyone has any doubt about the need to restrain the forfeiture power of the IRS, they need to look no further than what happened to one of my constituents, as has already been mentioned, Andrew Clyde, whose namesake is on the bill. He is a law-abiding small business owner who served multiple combat tours. He had and has a successful gun store in northeast Georgia when the IRS seized his business bank accounts under a little-known procedure called civil asset forfeiture. Now, we already talked a moment about just what that means, but let me go into a little bit more depth about that. What actually happened here is that Mr. Clyde was not charged with a crime when they seized his assets. In fact, he was never charged with a crime. In fact, the government's only allegation against him was he regularly made large cash deposits. In other words, following what his own insurance would protect when he made those off-premise accounts, he was following good business practices.…
