On the recordNovember 18, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of Mr. Gohmert. I think he raises an issue that all Americans rightly need to be concerned about, and that is the invasion of our privacy that we expect to have under our Constitution when you have an IRS that is looking into your personal records. Mr. Speaker, I did get a letter from the IRS about 6 weeks after I wrote my letter to them demanding an answer for what they were doing to the Waco Tea Party. So I think they are targeting everybody. They don't care who they target. It seems like they are on a mission to try to squelch opposition to this administration's policies. I would now like to yield to a brand-new freshman Member from Florida. Mr. DeSantis from Florida's Sixth District is going to share some stories about what his constituents have experienced with the IRS. Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Speaker, the power to tax is the power to destroy, and so when you have the government using that taxing power to target individual Americans based on their exercise of First Amendment rights, that really is the utmost seriousness in terms of the threat that that represents to constitutional government. I received a letter from one of my constituents a couple of weeks back named Carole McManus, and she is a leader in a conservative group in northeast Florida. They are basically dedicated towards educating about constitutional government, individual freedom, the rule of law, and traditional American principles.…





