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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Rep. Kelly Demands IRS Accountability on Fox & Friends Sunday

May 20, 2013

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WASHINGTON — On Sunday, May 19, 2013, Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, appeared on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Sunday to discuss last week’s hearing on the ongoing IRS discrimination scandal and the next steps in holding the agency accountable.

Highlights from Rep. Kelly’s remarks:

On the essence of the IRS scandal:

“You can’t look at what they are doing and say, ‘You know what? There are two sets of rules here in America. You people that pay the taxes, you hardworking Americans that do all that work, you are held to a different code of ethics and a different set of laws than we are as a government.’ To me, that is entirely illegal.”

“It is really an overreach into our First Amendment rights.”

“Who are these folks? Who gives them the power to do what they are doing? To look into our private lives [and ask,] ‘How much money do you have in your wallet? Whose yard sign do you have up? And when you pray, what is the content of your prayer?’ This is a tax question? I don’t think so. This is intimidation.
On whether anyone has been held sufficiently accountable:

“No, because this isn’t the private sector. Remember, this is government.”

On IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram now overseeing the division handling Obamacare:

“You do not promote incompetence.”

“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? The access that they’re going to have to private information? Oh good Lord. Listen, we have seen enough of this. This has been a movie that’s played way too long.”

“You don’t promote people for doing a bad job. You don’t promote people for being incompetent. And you certainly don’t turn it over to an agency where the acting chairman says, ‘We do a lousy job; we give poor customer service; my gosh, we failed in so many ways, and we’re sorry.’”

On the next steps for holding the IRS accountable:

“I am telling the American people right now: Wake up — light up the switchboards at the White House, your congressional representatives, your Senate representatives.

“This is a time for us to demand, as the American people have the right to do – this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people – demand that you get the kind of government that the Founders promised us. It’s up to us, as individual citizens, to demand it of the people that we sent to represent us, that they do the right job.”

“When you sit on the other side of the desk from these folks [the IRS], when they come in to see you, you try to say, ‘I didn’t understand’ … ‘Maybe I didn’t keep the keep the right records.’ No — that doesn’t work. You are held accountable. We need to do the same thing with our government.”

On the need for tax reform:

“There’s millions of Americans getting up today; they are going to be going to church, they are going to worship. Think about that Bible – the code by which we live – the Word of God: it is dwarfed by the code by which we are taxed.”

“There is something wrong in this country when we have given this much power to these few people to run our lives, the way that they are running our lives. It is an absolute outrage.”

“We need to get the American people to say, ‘It’s time to do tax reform — you promised it, every candidate promises it, do it now!’ Demand it, don’t ask for it, demand it.”

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