Political Quotes

“Mr. President, for several years now, I have been working on tax treaties that we have with other countries to try to protect Americans' privacy. I think it is very important that your personal information--what you buy with your credit card, what checks you write, and what you do with your bank account--is private. It is yours, and it is not to be sifted through or rummaged through by the government. I am very, very concerned that, over time, particularly with technology, the IRS is gaining too much power at the push of a button to simply sift through our bank accounts looking for anomalies. I think it is important that we protect Americans who live overseas. About 8 million Americans live overseas, and I think the vast majority of them are law-abiding citizens. This debate has been going on for several years now. I first tried to engage the Obama administration in this. We had meeting after meeting but no meaningful engagement. Currently, we have been involved in negotiations with the Trump administration, which has been more open to discussions of how we protect Americans' privacies. Unfortunately, these negotiations were sabotaged by the Republican leader, who chose to bring these tax treaties forward at a time when we were in the middle of negotiations. This is very disappointing to me because I think we were at the point of actually achieving a deal that would protect the privacy of Americans.…”