Max Baucus: “Essentially, the amendment offered by the Senator from Tennessee is an amendment to take an employee off the board. That…”

“Essentially, the amendment offered by the Senator from Tennessee is an amendment to take an employee off the board. That is the point. The real question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we want this restructuring to work or not? We create a Board, give the Board certain powers, and the Restructuring Commission, led by Senator Grassley from Iowa and Senator Kerrey of Nebraska, concluded there should be among board members an employee representative. That was their conclusion. They believed that would help restructuring work. Why? Because so many of the problems that we have with the IRS, most of the problems that were documented at the Finance Committee hearings, are employee problems--that is, rogue employees, employees who were covering up, employees doing this or that. Also problems with managers--some of them were doing their job, some were not. Obviously, an employee who is on the Board will be able to tell the Board what is going on, what is not going on, what the views of the employees are, and so forth. Now some suggest that the Board should just consult with employees. That will not work. You need somebody there on the Oversight Board who will be able to not only report to the employees what is going on, but be able to send back to employees what board policy is if we are going to get restructuring to work. We need teamwork here. We don't need an adversarial relationship. We are not talking about Board versus employees.”