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| Freshmen Forums Reps. Pappas and Tauscher April 16, 1997 |
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Questions asked
in this forum:
Is Congress promising too many tax cuts? Is Congress going too slow? Is a progressive tax unconstitutional? Where is Congress' budget? Will the IRS resist any change? Is there tax justice for all?
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A question from Karen Brown of Hemet, CA:
Bureaucratic resistance
If Congress decides to put sweeping changes in tax policies on the agenda, i.e. reinventing the Internal Revenue Service, what sort of bureaucratic resistance would you anticipate?
Representative Pappas responds:
If the Congress changes our nation's tax policy, those who work in the federal government are required to implement those changes.
Representative Tauscher responds:
It is unlikely that Congress will pass any kind of "sweeping" changes to the tax code during this session of Congress. It is clear, however, that before we enact any tax cuts we must first pass a credible balanced budget proposal. Balancing the budget must our number one priority. With regards to the IRS, we can institute all kinds of reforms without changing the tax code. In fact, yesterday the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1226, the Taxpayer Browsing Protection Act which will make it a federal crime for IRS employees to browse through American's tax returns and files without proper authorization. This is just common sense, but kinds of joyrides through taxpayers' records because the IRS was failing to enforce its own regulations. As a member of the Blue Dogs, a group of 23 moderate to conservative Democrats who recognize that balancing the budget should be our number one priority, we have maintained that it makes more sense to implement spending cuts in reaching a balanced budget than digging an even bigger hole in our huge annual budget deficits. Once again, we must make balancing our budget the number one priority of the 105th Congress.
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