Solons Seek Source of Provision to Allow Access to Tax Returns

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WASHINGTON – Democratic lawmakers mounted a hunt yesterday for the author of a measure, passed within a $388 billion spending bill, that would allow members of Congress to obtain confidential tax returns.


Meanwhile, Republicans distanced themselves from the provision while insisting there was no “conspiracy” or ill intent behind the insertion of the provision into the massive spending bill that passed over the weekend.


The incident continued to raise questions about the practice of bundling legislation into multi-thousand page documents that go at least partially unread by lawmakers.


Rep. Ernest Istook of Oklahoma issued a vehement denial of reports that he had authored the measure. He claimed to have been “bypassed” by staff aides who inserted the language without his knowledge, and said the provision was written by the Internal Revenue Service.


Mr. Istook, who chairs the House subcommittee on transportation and Treasury appropriations, said the staffers involved answer only to the chairman of the full appropriations committee, Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida.


But Mr. Young linked the language to Mr. Istook’s subcommittee, which he said “felt [the provision] necessary to conduct proper oversight” over the Internal Revenue Service, which had asked for an unprecedented half-billion dollar increase to its budget.


His office declined to elaborate on the details of how the language entered the bill.


In a floor statement on Saturday, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Grassley of Iowa, berated appropriators for involving themselves in drafting tax laws without the necessary expertise “to remove poorly conceived and poorly drafted tax provisions that try to sneak in at the dark of night.”


Mr. Young insisted yesterday that the provision had been misinterpreted and misrepresented, and that there had been no intent by lawmakers to access anyone’s personal information.


However, the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Conrad of North Dakota, held a press conference yesterday to emphasize that the powers outlined in the provision were “unrestricted” and “dangerous” and could have been used by powerful committee chairman to go after their political enemies or unfriendly journalists.


Mr. Conrad said he planned to write to the IRS today to ask what role the agency played in producing the provision.


“That person needs to be identified and held to account because that is beyond the pale,” Mr. Conrad said.


The measure was quickly nullified in the Senate version, and the House is expected to remove the provision before the bill goes to the president for his signature.


The bill allows the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees and any “agents” designated by them to access IRS facilities and “any tax returns or return information.” The provision also exempts the chairmen and their agents from “any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information,” which appears to include prohibitions on releasing the information to the public.


Senator Schumer on Sunday called for an investigation into how the language got into the bill. “I’m glad they took it out. It was a pernicious provision however it got there,” he said yesterday.


Mr. Istook said the IRS drafted the language at the request of committee staff, in an effort to “make clear that our oversight duties include visiting and inspecting the huge IRS processing centers – but not inspecting tax returns,” he said.


Mr. Istook said language to the contrary was an “honest mistake” and had not been “sufficiently reviewed” by staff because it was drafted by the IRS. He blamed a “chain of command problem” that he said he would attempt to fix in a reorganization of the committee in coming weeks.


Mr. Conrad said he could not think of any reason for committee staffers to look at an individual’s tax returns.


“You don’t need some whole new, unfettered access to the individual tax returns of people or of companies in order to figure out how the IRS is spending its money,” he said.


At his press conference, Mr. Conrad displayed a poster-sized copy of an article from The New York Times that said Mr. Istook was responsible for the provision, and he blasted the congressman for stating the law did not jeopardize anyone’s privacy.


But Mr. Istook vehemently denied involvement.


“I didn’t write it; I didn’t approve it; I wasn’t even consulted. My name shouldn’t be associated with it, because I had nothing to do with it, and didn’t even know about it until after the bill was done and was filed,” Mr. Istook said in a statement yesterday.


The incident has led to widespread criticism of the legislative process, in which nine complicated appropriations bills were combined into a single “omnibus” bill and put to a vote.


Mr. Conrad complained that the nine bills were “dumped on members’ desks at about 2:00 in the afternoon on Saturday” with a vote only hours later.


A spokesman for the IRS, Terry Lemons, said the agency’s commissioner, Mark Everson, had been unaware of the provision in the spending bill and “strongly supports the measure being deleted from the final bill,” the Associated Press reported. He said the agency was carefully reviewing a congressional inquiry seeking details on how the language was drafted.


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