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All right. Thanks.
Who know is that first Mr. Must saw tax information that is
housed in the Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Services And when the
former nonpartisan top career official at the Treasury
Department, a trusted guardian of Americans privacy under both
Republican and Democratic presidents for more than 35
years. When he rebuffed Musk and said
he wanted to protect the privacy as he had done for three
decades, he was pushed aside. While administration officials
initially testified that Doge was granted read only, They were
just going to read and invade our privacy.
That way the sensitive data they were later and forced to admit
that the Musketeers had both read and write.
That is, they can make changes in the sensitive databases
related to federal tax returns, Social Security benefits,
Supplemental Social Security Income benefits, and pay for
veterans. Not satisfied with this
temporary access to American families, financial information
must then came for some of the even more highly guarded
taxpayer data that's contained in the IRS Integrated Data
Retrieval System. This is a system to which access
is denied to political officials, even the IRS
Commissioner, the taxpayer advocate, and the IRS Chief
information officer. And I want to respond directly
to you, Mr. Schmucker, about that and your claim that there
were hundreds of additional people that we wanted to have go
into all this data. What we wanted was to enforce
the tax laws. We wanted the tax cheats to be
brought to justice. You all took the cop off the
beat. But let me make this point.
The data that Musk and the Musketeers are seeking that they
perhaps got exposed is data that is so sensitive that even the
IRS commissioner is not entitled to see it.
That is protected data protected until this happened.
And the claim that because some of it that they got was
anonymous would not get into the privacy was rebutted by Mr.
Barthole when I questioned him as the head of the Joint
Committee on Taxation, an independent, nonpartisan group,
who explained to us how that data could be used.
When Mr. Musk and his AI and his minions and his Musketeers get
together and compare these databases and invade our
privacy, we must adopt this resolution.
I yield back. Gentleman yields.
Now recognize Mr. Evans, just write the last word.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this conversation,
led by Mr. Doggett, the gentleman could speak into the
microphone. This conversation LED by Mr.
Doggett, I think he needs to know I like the year of my time.
To Mr. Doggett, thank you very. Much.
Thank you very much for that. There are two laws that Mister
Musk and DOGE are ignoring. They are Section 61 O three of
the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act of 1974.
Section 61, O3, which has been before this committee on
numerous occasions, protects the confidentiality of tax returns
and return information, including all of the tax return
information that is received, are collected by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Privacy Act of 1974 was
designed to provide individual Americans with more control over
the government gathering, disseminating, and using our
private information. What's happened to the
libertarians in the Republican Party who once believed that
government was a challenge and that the privacy of American
citizens should be protected from the overreach of
government? What we have here is an
overreach without justification. Why is it necessary in fighting
waste, fraud and abuse to interfere with the personal data
of American citizens, every American citizens of the issues
that we have before us today or that DOGE has also sought access
to what are called omnibus sharing agreements.
This is another aspect I've not touched on so far.
And these omnibus sharing agreements would let must the
link individual tax data across the whole host of different
federal agencies. A federal statute makes it
unlawful for the IRS to share taxpayer data with other
agencies for reasons unrelated to the administration of our tax
system. New York University Tax Law
Center experts indicate that such an omnibus information
sharing agreement across agencies would not conform with
the strict, strict rules of 61 O3 that govern how and when
taxpayer information can be shared.
And so again, here is an area that needs to be explored other
than through an empty witness chair to find out about the
extent of the violation of federal law with this sharing
agreement that has been rubber stamped by the administration.
And most recently, just last week, Mr. Musk came for more of
Americans private information stored in the Child Support
database that is used to enforce court order child support
payments, which is a good, good thing.
But each agency receives tax data that has a detailed data
sharing agreement with IRS and they have to comply with those
taxpayer privacy protections when that goes over to the
Department of Health and Human Services.
Unfortunately, Health and Human Services is now run by the
vaccine denier Robert F Kennedy Junior.
And he not disregarding really those requirements.
He gave those exactly what they asked for.
It's simply outrageous that Americans private and personal
financial information has not been protected from the prying
eyes of an unelected billionaire and his teenage Musketeers.
At a bare minimum, Congress and the American people need a full
accounting of what data has been shared with Musk and Doge and
for what purposes. And despite all the rhetoric on
the other side, we have absolutely no explanation as to
why that right of Americans for a full accounting is not being
provided, why it is being obstructed and blocked by the
Republicans. Answers to this resolution of
inquiry on behalf of all the Democrats on this committee will
provide us with a little of that accounting.
Only then can we begin to move forward as a bipartisan
majority, as the bipartisan majority did over 50 years ago
when there was criminality from another Republican president in
the wake of the Watergate scandal and addressed the
shortcomings of the enforcement of our tax privacy law and begin
to restore taxpayer trust in our voluntary tax system.
The Republicans basically say they don't know and they don't
care what Musk is doing with your personal tax return, your
Social Security information, your health data, anything
concerning child custody. And by blocking this resolution,
they just want to ensure that no questions are asked and no
information about this likely violation of multiple federal
laws ever becomes public. That's why we should adopt this
resolution. And I yield back.
Authority, statutory authority. We will remain independent and
objective and we'll continue to follow our auditing standards
and our work continues unabated as we currently are still
working under our Inspector General, Doctor Kafari.
Thank you. And my question to Mr. Curry is
for over 100 years, GAO has played a crucial role in
enhancing the effectiveness of government programs and ensuring
taxpayer money is well spent. Over the past 20 years, GAO work
has resulted in about 1.45 trillion in financial benefits
and over 30,000 programs and operational benefits.
Through its high risk list, GAO focused attention on the most
significant challenges facing the government.
Once the challenge is human capital, including skills
shortage, a challenge Doge does not seem to appreciate as it
purges civil servants, what are the consequences of reducing the
federal workforce using a sledgehammer rather than a
scalpel? Well, you're correct.
Many of the high risk areas, and there's over 30 of them across
all of the federal government that we've identified are on the
list because of some sort of staffing or capacity challenge.
That means that either they don't have the right number of
people to perform the mission or they don't have the right
skills. So typically what you do is you,
you figure out what you want the government or the agencies to do
and how you want to do it, and then you figure out what sort of
staff you need to do it. So obviously it's, it's going to
have some implications, but you know, we, we don't know yet what
exactly those will be. Thank you.
And Miss Lang, I didn't give you any time to respond.
So if you want to take a couple 30 seconds if you like.
No, thank you. I.
Think my colleague covered. Everything.
Thank you, Chair, and I yield back.
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