-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, last year, Senate Democrats used the budget reconciliation process to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. They did this without a single Republican vote. Included in that monstrosity was an $80 billion payday for the Internal Revenue Service--more than 6.5 times the amount of funding the IRS would normally receive in any given year.

After this happened, I had a lot of Tennesseans ask me: Why does the IRS need that much money? Many of them are really fearful that the IRS is going to come after them and their small businesses. And you know what. They are probably right.

The Biden administration insists they are going to use this $80 billion to help the IRS answer the telephones because they are only answered about 20 percent of the time, but we know that it means more audits for small businesses, small business manufacturers, and Main Street merchants. This administration has never once passed up an opportunity to expand government power, and they aren't about to stop now. We know this expansion will lead to needless harassment. That is the nature of Big Government.

But I am equally concerned about the sheer amount of data the IRS has scraped up during investigations. The IRS already collects far more data than they need. In 2022, they hired a contractor to block taxpayers from accessing government services unless they handed over sensitive biometric data. They already have your name, address, and Social Security number, but now they want to collect a picture of your government ID, your fingerprints, and a selfie photo. Why in the world would we allow the IRS to collect this data? The answer, of course, is that most people wouldn't let them have it if they had a choice. But the IRS wants to force this on the American people.

To make matters worse, we know that they are completely incapable of protecting the data they have access to. Let's just take a moment and look at some of the instances where the IRS has shown their disregard for your data security.

In 2015, hackers exposed more than 700,000 taxpayers' Social Security numbers. In 2017, the IRS notified Congress that hackers had accessed more than 100,000 Federal student aid accounts. In 2021, the infamous ProPublica leak unlawfully exposed financial information on many prominent Americans. In 2022, the 990-T leak exposed the sensitive info of more than 100,000 taxpayers not once but twice.

But even on a good day, the top men at the IRS have refused to prioritize data security.

They still haven't responded to inquiries I made about what security protocols they implemented as part of their ``work from home'' policy.

The IRS should be collecting the minimum amount of information required to do their job, and they should be doing all they can to protect your information. Instead, this Agency has a giant flashing sign out front inviting hackers to browse their files. These bad actors already know the IRS is vulnerable, and we will not be able to control that threat until the IRS abandons its latest power grab and prioritizes data security.

This is what the Biden administration needs to focus on before it spends 80 billion taxpayer dollars harassing the American people.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source