“Over the past few days we’ve heard many in the media talk
about how this has been a ‘rough week’ for the Administration.
It’s been a worse week for those who cherish the First Amendment.”
about how this has been a ‘rough week’ for the Administration.
It’s been a worse week for those who cherish the First Amendment.”
“U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the need for cooperation and transparency from the Obama administration as Congress investigates the IRS scandal.”
Transcript
MCCONNELL: “Over the past few days we’ve heard many in the media talk about how this has been a ‘rough week’ for the Administration. It’s been a worse week for those who cherish the First Amendment.
“On Friday, we learned that, just as we'd been told by our constituents, the IRS deliberately targeted conservative groups across the country in the midst of a heated national election.
“Over the weekend, we learned that the extent of it was even broader than we originally thought. Then this morning, we all learned that the targeting wasn’t limited to an IRS office out in Cincinnati — as the Administration suggested last week — but that it reached all the way to IRS headquarters in Washington.
“What we don’t know at this point is whether it jumped the fence from the IRS to the White House. But we do know this: we can’t count on the administration to be forthcoming about the details of this scandal — because so far they’ve been anything but.
“So, this morning, I’m calling on the President to make available, completely and without restriction, everyone who can answer the questions we have as to what was going on at the IRS, who knew about it, and how high it went. No stonewalling, no more incomplete answers, no more misleading responses, no holding back witnesses, no matter how senior their current or former positions — we need full transparency and cooperation.
“The American people deserve answers.
“The activities that the IRS has now owned up to, and that were uncovered by their Inspector General, are an outrage.
“We now know that the IRS targeted groups for using such terminology as — get this — ‘we the people,’ and for educating folks about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
“I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.
“What’s also clear is that government officials repeatedly failed to own up to what they knew was going on — when it turns out they’d known about it since at least the middle of 2011.
“So the IRS knew what was happening — yet they continued to give us assurances that they were applying the tax rules in a fair and impartial way.
“Despite repeated assurances from the Obama Administration that it was not targeting its political enemies through the IRS during the last election cycle, we’ve now learned that the IRS was in fact singling out conservative groups – groups who dared to speak up and express their First Amendment rights. [Emphasis added]
“Let’s recap.
“Last March, after receiving multiple claims of unusual harassment by the IRS from constituents who wanted to form tax-exempt political organizations, I and several of my colleagues sent a letter to then-IRS Commission Shulman questioning selective enforcement on tax exempt organizations.
“Now, we learn, according to the IRS' own Inspector General, that the IRS was well aware that this selective treatment was happening at the time our letter was sent, and in fact had already acted to correct what they later called ‘inappropriate’ behavior. But there was no mention of that in the IRS’ initial response.
“Nor was there any mention of this behavior, which was by that time well-known within the agency, in a second letter sent back to us in September 2012.
“We had to wait several more months — to wait for a Special Investigator’s report that Republicans demanded — in order to find out the truth of what was actually happening at the IRS.
“In the coming days we’ll learn more, and we’ll start getting answers to questions like: was the IRS was deliberately misleading Republican Senators, or was it betraying profound incompetence? But, as I said, the fact is, none of this would have come out if we’d relied on the Administration’s own word and Republicans hadn’t demanded the truth.
“Clearly, we’ve only started to scratch the surface of this scandal."
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Senator Mitch McConnell Biography
Mitch McConnell is the Senate Republican Leader. First elected to that position unanimously by his colleagues in 2006, he is the 15th Senate Republican Leader and only the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the Senate. The first, Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.
Senator McConnell previously served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, as the Republican Leader in the 110th, 111th and 112th Congresses and the Majority Whip in the 108th and 109th Congresses. McConnell also served in leadership as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. » Full Bio