Bob Kerrey: “I was very encouraged to read in this morning's newspaper the majority leader's comments about the agenda for the rest…”

“I was very encouraged to read in this morning's newspaper the majority leader's comments about the agenda for the rest of the session. An agreement has been reached on bringing up campaign finance reform next year. On the list of things that the majority leader had was taking action to restructure the Internal Revenue Service. It was a very controversial debate over one proposal that Congressman Portman, Senator Grassley, Congressman Cardin, and I introduced a couple of months ago dealing with a proposed public board of directors. A lot of attention was paid to that. Unfortunately, in the process of paying attention to that, we lost sight and a lot of people lost sight of some of the other things that we are going to legislate on that are terribly important. I was pleased to see, since the House has passed it, that the majority leader indicated that is one of the things he is going to try to get done sometime during the rest of the year. There is broad consensus on some of the things which we know will improve the operational efficiency of the Internal Revenue Service. Chairman Roth's Finance Committee had 3 days of hearings on a separate set of issues dealing with privacy, dealing with the power of the Internal Revenue Service to demand action on the part of taxpayers. These are very important issues, and the chairman has indicated his desire to take up next year the consideration of those issues.”