Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to pass the Stopping Tax Offenders and Prosecuting Identity Theft Act of 2013. With tax day coming upon us on Tuesday, the time is now to pass this bipartisan legislation. I worked on the STOP Identity Theft Act to address the growing problems of tax identity theft and to protect taxpayers against fraud. From the beginning this bill has been bipartisan. Senator Sessions is the lead Republican on this bill, and in fact recently this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a vote of 18-0. Given the number of members on the committee with very different views on issues, that is an accomplishment and shows what a pressing problem this is. I think people will be pretty shocked, as you will be, Mr. President, when you hear these numbers. Criminals are increasingly filing false tax returns using stolen identity information in order to claim victims' refunds. You might think that would be a rare incident, but as a former law enforcement person, as the attorney general for the State of New Mexico, I think you know anything can happen. This is a problem where more than anything is happening. In 2012 alone, identity thieves filed 1.8 million fraudulent tax returns, almost double the number confirmed in 2011. The numbers and the documents in these cases may be forged, but the dollars behind them are real, because in 2012 there was another 1.1 million fraudulent tax returns that slipped through the cracks, and our U.S.…”