Political Quotes

“I rise today to urge my colleagues to pass the Stopping Tax Offenders and Prosecuting Identity Theft Act of 2013. Before we have another year--yet another year--of criminals stealing the tax returns of millions of hardworking Americans, we need to pass this bipartisan bill. Let me tell you from the start this is a bill that I introduced with Senator Sessions of Alabama. This is a bill that made it through the Judiciary Committee 18 to 0. After a number of amendments were considered and rejected, this bill made it through the Judiciary Committee--in which there are many different people of ideological views--18 to 0. So what is this about? We have a problem in this country, and it is a problem I think people would be very surprised about if they knew how much money it involved. Criminals are increasingly filing false tax returns using stolen identity information in order to claim victims' refunds. What does this mean? How much money are we talking about? In 2012 alone, identity thieves filed 1.8 million fraudulent tax returns, almost double the number confirmed in 2011. The numbers in the documents in these cases may be forged, but the dollars behind them are real. In 2012, there were another 1.1 million fraudulent tax returns that slipped through the cracks, and our U.S. Treasury paid out--are you ready for this--$3.6 billion in fraudulent returns, $3.6 billion at a time when we have a debt.…”