Political Quotes

“There is no denying that we may need reforms in this. There has been a lot of debate about this. The gentleman from California and I have had those kinds of conversations. But I would point out that the investigations are not complete, and they need to be complete. The ranking member mentioned earlier in his comments money and donors as reasons for this rule, but neither the word ``donor,'' ``money,'' or ``contributions'' appears in the regulation. It has been cited by the former Commissioner of the IRS that there was confusion. A confusion narrative emerged, but it was on the basis of no internal investigation at the IRS. There has been no interview of the employees, no facts established. We are still doing this investigation, from our standpoint, as is the inspector general. We know from our investigation so far, having interviews with the Cincinnati employees, that they were not confused by the rules. They were processing the applications until interference came down from Washington, from higher up in the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS. Employees then flagged Tea Party applications and others because of what they said were ``media interest,'' not confusion. Within 24 hours of the flagging for media interest, these Washington, D.C., officials at the IRS requested Tea Party applications.…”