Angie Craig: “I will be brief, but I did want to recognize the chairman of the Finance Committee and the ranking member for the…”

“I will be brief, but I did want to recognize the chairman of the Finance Committee and the ranking member for the tremendous work they have done on this bill to reform the IRS. Many of my colleagues have come to the floor today to speak about the reforms embodied in H.R. 2676. While the House moved very rapidly, the Senate engaged in a more deliberative process, appropriately, and reviewed in greater depth, in great detail, the changes we believed would be necessary. We did not want to make symbolic changes in the IRS, but wanted to change the very culture, the very thinking of the IRS, the way it functions, the way it treats the taxpayers of this country. I have been in the Congress of the United States now a few years. And not by my vote, but by the collective vote of past Congresses, we have seen the Internal Revenue Code expand and expand and become more complicated. And every time the government decided it needed more money, it hired more IRS agents. Control spending? No. Demand a leaner, more efficient bureaucracy? No. Review policies and repeal or reform uneconomic ones? No. Raise taxes and encourage the tax collector to squeeze the taxpayer harder--that was the way 40 years of liberal Congresses claimed they were addressing the fiscal problems of our country. So the IRS was an agency that Congress created and allowed to grow.”