Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I stand today in support of H.R. 1843, the Restraining Excessive Seizure of Property through the Exploitation of Civil Asset Forfeiture Tools Act--more simply, the RESPECT Act. Fundamentally, this legislation is about stopping abusive civil asset seizure practices. Too often, honest small business owners were treated like criminals and had their bank accounts seized by the Federal Government for making frequent deposits from cash sales. The law at issue today is the Bank Secrecy Act, which set up new reporting requirements for certain activities, like depositing more than $10,000 in cash. The purpose of the law is to limit criminal business activity conducted in cash, money laundering, drug transactions, and criminal enterprises. Thus, systematically depositing amounts just short of this threshold, is deemed an illegal attempt to structure bank transactions to avoid the reporting requirement. Over the past 2 years, a number of law-abiding small businesses with high volumes of cash sales testified before the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight describing just how this law was being applied by the IRS and the Department of Justice to seize their bank accounts. Congressmen on both sides of the aisle immediately denounced this practice and sought to have the seized amounts returned. In October of 2014, the IRS changed its policy on enforcement.…”