Kevin Brady: “I thank Congressman Johnson for yielding me time, and I thank him for his leadership for that great State. Mr. Speaker…”

“I thank Congressman Johnson for yielding me time, and I thank him for his leadership for that great State. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition--to be clear--not to the underlying bill. I strongly support the education provision; the one that would strengthen historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions. In fact, that provision has passed this House with, I believe, unanimous support. But I do rise in opposition to the dangerous precedent set by the tax provision included in this bill. I don't believe taxpayer rights should be trampled in this process. The Senate, as you know, airdropped an unrelated $2.5 billion provision that threatens taxpayer privacy and creates a dangerous opportunity to potentially misuse our private tax information. The bill, for the first time, now authorizes new large-scale sharing of previously protected taxpayer information. With hundreds of contractors, thousands of educational institutions, and other bureaucrats, in many cases, without taxpayer consent and, potentially, without the safeguards that protect it. The scale we are talking about here is huge. We are talking about at least 31 million individual disclosures of taxpayer information every year and hundreds of thousands a year after that. This would be the third largest disclosure of taxpayer information for non-tax purposes in the history, second only to the Census and the Affordable Care Act. It doesn't have to be this way.…”