Judd Gregg: “But first I want to congratulate the chairman of the committee, Chairman Roth, for bringing forward this really…”

“But first I want to congratulate the chairman of the committee, Chairman Roth, for bringing forward this really excellent bill to try to address what have been some extraordinary abuses which have been testified to before his committee and testified to in other arenas. In my own case, I held a meeting in New Hampshire--a number of meetings, and found that we have had over 75 cases involving complaints involving the Internal Revenue Service since I have been in the Senate, which is an extremely high percentage. We held a number of meetings. In one of the meetings, we had a presentation that was really disturbing--two presentations, in fact. The first was a fellow who practiced tax law and tax preparation for over 27 years who brought in a memo, an actual memo that he had taken off the desk of an agent. And the memo stated very bluntly that the IRS agents in that arena, in that area, were to collect a specific amount of dollars. Not only were they to collect a specific amount of dollars, but they were to collect a specific amount of dollars every month. In fact, it went further. It said how much they were supposed to collect every day, almost down to every hour--how much money the agents in that area were supposed to collect. It was not collection on the basis of people who legitimately owed taxes; it was collection on the basis of a quota system.”