On the recordJuly 15, 2014
I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment. The Acting CHAIR. A point of order is reserved. Pursuant to House Resolution 661, the gentleman from Florida and a Member opposed each will control 5 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida. Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chairman, it was really troubling to be reviewing emails that the IRS finally produced to us after we asked for these emails for over a year. Of course, they gave them to us on the afternoon of July 3, so as to minimize the press damage. Basically, the emails showed Lois Lerner sending an email to a technician saying, you know, Congress will ask for our emails, and I have told people in the IRS they need to be careful about what they say; question, if we do an instant message in the system that is called OCS, will those be immune to congressional oversight? The technician basically said, well, that is the default setting, you can make it so that it would be archivable and searchable. That was very troubling because it was almost like Lerner, as a matter of course, is conducting herself in a way to obstruct the proper oversight, and that is very troubling with an agency that is this powerful. So I think what this amendment will do will be to simply prevent that. This is saying exactly what Lois Lerner was asking about, the settings. If you are going to use funds, the settings have got to be turned on, and if you don't, then you can't use funds to operate it.…
