Do YOU Want To Give Unfettered Power To Politicos To Look At Your Tax Return? (Joe Gandelman)
Joe Gandelman
The truly scary thing is — for members of BOTH PARTIES and independents — this dead-of-night measure to give politicos the legal right to look at anyone's tax returns on a whim almost oozed through in the sleaziest political style:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress passed legislation Saturday giving two committee chairman and their assistants access to income tax returns without regard to privacy protections, but not before red-faced Republicans said the measure was a mistake and would be swiftly repealed.
In other words, it was just a boo-boo. This kind of thing — giving such HUGE POWERS — just happened (Harry Potter waved a magic wand). More:
The Senate unanimously adopted a resolution immediately after passing a 3,300-word spending bill containing the measure, saying the provision "shall have no effect." House leaders promised to pass the resolution next Wednesday.
"We're going to get that done," said John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
The spending bill covering most federal agencies and programs will not be sent to President Bush until the House acts on the resolution repealing the tax returns language.
"There will be no window where this will be law," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said. He referred to the provision as the Istook amendment and congressional aides said it was put in the bill at the request of Rep. Ernest Istook Jr., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's transportation subcommittee.
The provision and the inability of Hastert, R-Illinois., to get the votes he wanted on an intelligence overhaul bill left Republican leaders chagrinned on a day they had intended to be a celebration of their accomplishments.
Is it my imagination or are we going to see a repeat of what has happened several times in American history where a party enjoys a legislative majority, but finds it's a double-edged sword? But we disgress:
"This is a serious situation," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. "Neither of us were aware that this had been inserted in this bill," he said, referring to himself and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Florida.
Questioned sharply by fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Stevens pleaded with the Senate to approve the overall spending bill despite the tax returns language.
A sign that the GOP leadership had better shore up its forces into a cohesive whole, or risk a splintered party. You can forsee some segments of the GOP going with the Democrats on some issues, handing the GOP's Congressional leadership and the White House some unwanted defeats. Unwanted defeats=reduction in clout. This could be avoided by not overreaching — even if it's one GOP member that is going too far.
Consensus on a party agenda and GOP party unity could be maintained if the focus is on above-board legislating. And what could be more damaging to the GOP than accusations that privacy provisions will be stripped to allow bigwig politicians to look at tax returns whenever they want? Continuing:
But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, said that wasn't good enough. "It becomes the law of the land on the signature of the president of the United States. That's wrong."
Conrad said the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem — Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it.
Definitely: this has been a longstanding problem. Politicians can stick little provisions into huge bills on all kinds of things. This just happened to be a provision that could be abused by anyone in power to intimidate political foes, create enemy lists, and extract revenge. THIS is the part of the story that is most intriguing:
Stevens, who repeatedly apologized for what he characterized as an error, took offense at Conrad's statement. "It's contrary to anything that I have seen happen in more than 30 years on this committee," he said.
Pounding on his desk, Stevens said he had given his word and so had Young that neither would use the authority to require the IRS to turn over individual or corporate tax returns to them. "I would hope that the Senate would take my word. I don't think I have ever broken my word to any member of the Senate."
"... Do I have to get down on my knees and beg," he said.
SORRY!!! Mother Teresa's "word" would not be enough if she was in Congress. Why?
(1) This is a huge power to quietly give to politicians.
(2) This was NOT brought up in the light of day; it was snuck into a bill. That is sleazy politics. If a Democrat did it when the Democrats were in power, it would be just as smelly.
MORE:
Both Young and Stevens will cede their chairmanships when the new Congress elected earlier this month takes office in January.
Some Democrats didn't accept the assertion that the provision was a mistake and demanded an investigation.
"We weren't born yesterday, we didn't come down with the first snow," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This isn't poorly thought out, this was very deliberately thought out and it was done in the dead of night."
Members of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee now have limited access to tax returns, but there are severe criminal and civil penalties if the information is disclosed or misused.
Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the measure will "bring us back to the doorstep to the days of President Nixon, President Truman and other dark days in our history when taxpayer information was used against political enemies."
The bottom line is this: there are controls and checks and balances for reasons. And if this was a valid proposal it wouldn't have been quietly shoved into the bill. Whomever put it in knew it would be controversial and wanted it to slip through, then be signed by the President into law. And then we would see if anyone's "word" could stand up to a signed law, if push came to shove.
I mean, it's disturbing, but it's been going on forever. Legislation now routinely runs thousands of pages, and most Congressmen and Senators don't even read most of the bills they vote on.
This is disturbing on multiple levels, but I don't see it changing any time soon, unfortunately.
2) What was the raw text of the Istook amendment, and why doesn't CNN or FoxNews have a copy of that linked at or embedded in the story? Is it available in the house.gov website somewhere?
The related article on Foxnews says "the bill and explanatory report, completed near midnight Friday, were about 14 inches tall, leaving many lawmakers baffled about its precise contents."
Overall, domestic spending only grew by 1% according to these bills... too bad it didn't shrink by 1%.
But there's an old saw “there's nothing so permanent as a temporary structure” and income tax withholding has been with us ever since. Americans of the 1930's just wouldn't recognize the sheeplike responses to invasions of privacy we take for granted today.
Since VAT or sales tax are collected and reported by sellers it wouldn't require that kind of intimacy of the government with an individual's private affairs.
"In questions of power, then, speak no more of confidence in man, but rather bind him down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution."
-Thomas Jefferson
That goes for both political parties.
And the odds of amending the Contitution to get rid of the income tax are pretty long against.
This is probably why people wanting to simply flatten and simplify the tax code to reduce its intrusiveness are more likely to go forward than any effort to do away with income taxes entirely.
Some people would like to see exactly that result, but I'm not one of them.
I'm not an opponent of tax progressivity in general, by the way, and I do think the benefit of the income tax is exactly so it can be more progressive. This horrifies some of my libertarian and conservative friends, but I think that if it's done properly it's perfectly fair and morally justified, both on pragmatic and security grounds. Although I hate the intrusiveness it entails. So I'm kind of ambivalent I guess you'd say.