Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, the gentleman from New York and I are going to tell you a fascinating story. It is a story that when we tell it to our constituents at home, there is such a level of concern about what they have heard has happened that it really gets their attention. The good news is that the Ways and Means Committee and others have come along and tried to come up with a remedy. So here is what has been going on: for the past 2 years, the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee has been investigating how the IRS has abused its civil asset forfeiture authority. We heard from numerous people about how the IRS seized their life savings with no notice simply because they had deposited their own money into their own bank accounts in amounts of less than $10,000. You heard that right--their own money into their own bank accounts with no underlying bad act, and the IRS came in and seized their assets with no notice. It was so outrageous and so egregious in some of these cases, Mr. Speaker, that the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service actually apologized to some of these people. Now, getting an apology out of the IRS Commissioner was like birthing a calf, but we got the apology from him, and we have been able to move forward. Subsequent to that, the Internal Revenue Service has changed their policy--which is okay, it is a good step--but we have to go farther and we need to change the underlying statute.…”