Earl Blumenauer

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Why shouldn't we have the same rule apply to the 10,000 employees of the House of Representatives?

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to my friend from Michigan, and I would just say why shouldn't we lead by example here in Congress, to whom much has been given? Shouldn't we have the credibility? I would have supported this bill in Ways and Means, with one simple amendment. I offered an amendment to apply the same provisions to Congress. The House of Representatives has a worse record of compliance with our employees than the IRS. The IRS has the best record in the Federal Government. Every single department in the executive branch has a better record in Congress. Why should we have over 500 people on that chart not paying their taxes? If it is such a great idea that you can implement this smoothly and simply for the IRS, why shouldn't it be easier to implement with Congress, which has about 10 percent of the employees but has four times more delinquency? Well, people on the committee were all aflutter. They did not, on a technical basis, allow me to offer this amendment, so I went to the Rules Committee. I think this is a good principle. People ought to pay their taxes. But if you are going to use a sledgehammer like this and it is possible to administer, why doesn't it apply to Congress? Congress sets the rules. Congress funds the IRS. Congress passes that crazy Internal Revenue Code that people hate and then blame the IRS for administering what Congress passed. Now, I am mystified. If this is not just a stunt to try and divert attention from the fact that Congress and the Republican leadership has been attacking the IRS, defunding it, making its job a difficult job under the best of circumstances, why not apply it to Congress? Why shouldn't we set the example, particularly when we have more people under our employment who are on that big list? Don't we lead by example? Shouldn't people look to us? The hypocrisy in not allowing my amendment to apply to Congress may be one of the reasons why Congress is the only entity in the Federal Government that has probably lower ratings than the IRS. It is because we are not willing to be accountable, because we play games, because we do things that we know will never be enacted into law but would be a good sound bite on somebody's Web site or a quick interview.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. I am going to give all of my colleagues an opportunity to step up and to cosponsor legislation that would extend to Congress the same degree of scrutiny as they want to have for the IRS. Even though the IRS problem is much smaller than ours--it is less than one-quarter--what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I don't know if this is sauce, but I would invite my colleagues to step up and not play games. Have Congress be accountable.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy. Mr. Speaker, I like the notion of accountability. It is true that we are up for election every other year, and I am sure that my friend from North Carolina has a system in his office to make sure that the 18 people who work for him are not on this list of over 500 people. But that is not a suitable accountability. We are talking about an entire agency. I think there is no good reason that we shouldn't have the same sort of accountability for almost 10,000 people who work for the House of Representatives. Shouldn't we collectively set an example? After all, there are four times as many people who have tax delinquency who work for the House of Representatives. Why shouldn't we set an example? If it can be easily administered and we want to send a message, why don't we send a message that we care about it? We can learn from the gentleman about his system to make sure there are no tax delinquencies in his office. I would like to know that, and I am sure the leadership of the House of Representatives would like to implement it here.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I just returned from the United Nations where there is a special session on the drug problems. This is a serious and complex issue, but the war on drugs, where we have spent over $1 trillion, has been an abject failure. Drugs are still readily plentiful in the United States, the cost is down, and we have caught hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Latin American countries in the crossfire. Yet, the United States is on the sidelines here. There are countries that are stepping forward for reform, for harm reduction, trying to deal with the death penalty. Yet, the United States is trying to balance out the reformers of seeking a middle ground between them and Iran and China and Russia. That is not what the United States should be doing. We should be involved in reform. We should minimize the danger that is a result of misguided practice. We can deescalate this and make a difference for people around the world and, in fact, do a better job of dealing with the drug problem in America.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. In reclaiming my time, if I may reframe the question, because I am not trying to trick the gentleman. I want to know what the impact would be on 7.3 million people if there were no money available to implement the Affordable Care Act. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, in reclaiming my time, I would appreciate the gentleman, on his own time, elaborating on this, and the gentleman is not answering. What would be the impact, as the gentleman said in his opening statement, if the money were not allocated to implement the Affordable Care Act? It is sort of a backdoor way via the budget process, which you can control, to defund the Affordable Care Act. The fact is, for those 7.3 million people who get the tax credit and for the over 17 million Americans who have received health care under the Affordable Care Act, being able to implement the law is customer service. I would think that my Republican friends would become very cranky if the bureaucracy in the IRS just decided that they weren't going to implement part of the law. So what the IRS has done within some areas that it does have budgetary discretion is to make sure that there are adequate people to try and implement these provisions. Now, it is true that the Tax Code becomes more and more complex, but that is not the fault of the IRS. Those are the people who are charged with implementing what Congress does. Since I have been in Congress--and my Republican friends have been in charge most of this time--the Tax Code has become longer, more complex, even as they have cut back the resources to that critical agency. What business assaults its accounts receivable department? The Internal Revenue Service is the largest customer service agency in the world, and they have a very difficult job because Congress in the last 25 years has cut 30,000 people out of the workforce. In the last 10 years, we have seen an additional reduction. I am glad that our Republican friends were embarrassed because of their continued cuts to the IRS budget and the service got so bad that they restored almost $300 million. But it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, enough to give the service that we want, and it does not make up for the fact that the IRS has a legal obligation to administer the Affordable Care Act, which is still on the books, which is serving millions of Americans and has become more complex and actually more onerous for individual taxpayers. Remember, they have made changes to make a sharper cliff if people make a mistake in the estimate of their income because it is graduated. You get less help the more money you make. Under the Republican assault on the Affordable Care Act, there is more of a cliff that faces people if they have a change in circumstance. If they misallocate, if they lose a job, if they get a bonus, that can have significant consequences. Mr. Speaker, the United States Internal Revenue Service has been a whipping boy for everybody. This a service that people love to hate. Republicans have taken their war against taxes to high art by assaulting the IRS, making it hard to serve, and attacking it repeatedly. Mr. Speaker, this has significant consequences. The United States relies on voluntary compliance from the taxpayers. Every 1 percent less voluntary compliance costs the taxpayers $30 billion that could be used to reduce the deficit or to pay for badly needed services or maybe rebuild our fraying infrastructure. This has consequences. Now, I would respectfully suggest that this is a cut of a half billion dollars to a budget that is already stressed and can't deal with the needs of today. People in the IRS are dealing with a computer system that those of you who took computer science in the 1960s--I didn't--but you would feel comfortable with some of the programming language they have. It is hopelessly out of date. The employees are overwhelmed on the phone lines. And Congress keeps changing the Tax Code. Taking away a half billion dollars in user fees and throwing it into the general fund makes it very unlikely that it will be available for the priorities that are going to be necessary to administer the IRS. My friend doesn't care if the Affordable Care Act is not administered. In fact, he would rather that it not be administered, but that is not the law. That is not fair to the taxpayers. Taking away these user fees, putting it in the appropriations process, is going to have sort of a grab bag in Congress for those moneys, and I don't know where those would end up. But given the composition and the attitude of the people who control it now, it wouldn't be available to administer the Affordable Care Act, something the IRS is obligated to do and which we owe to the American people. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 20 seconds. It is striking that somehow giving assistance to 7.3 million people who get the tax credits--16 million people who are under the Affordable Care Act--to implement that does not fall within the definition of taxpayer assistance. And my friends, Smith, neither one of them, could actually answer that, and I think it is telling. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra), the distinguished leader of the Democratic Caucus and a senior member of the Committee on Ways and Means, who thinks that we ought to provide service to our taxpayers.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It is painful to listen to some of the rhetoric here on the floor that suggests that, somehow, the use of resources by the IRS is not dealing with customer service. The gentleman admitted that, under Republican leadership, they have worked to not fund the necessary resources for the Affordable Care Act. Now, this is a bill that is law. This is a bill that is impacting 16 million Americans, and 7.3 million people have gotten the tax credits. I would ask the gentleman from Missouri what the impact would be on 7.3 million taxpayers if we had no money available to implement the Affordable Care Act. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. In reclaiming my time, I am asking the gentleman: What would be the impact on the 7.3 million people who are claiming the tax credit under the Affordable Care Act, which you have not yet repealed and which still is the law of the land? What would the impact be on them if you had your way and there was no money? I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee and someone who understands the value of protecting the Federal Government's accounts receivable department.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Who are the 7.3 million people who get the tax credit under the Affordable Care Act? Does helping them fall within your definition of taxpayer assistance?

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Let me rephrase my question: Does assisting the 7.3 million people who get tax credits under the Affordable Care Act qualify in your definition of taxpayer assistance?

Mr. BLUMENAUER. If I have more time later, I would be happy to be involved in a colloquy with you on this.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I hope that there is an opportunity here for us to take a hard look at some of the issues surrounding the Republican assault on the IRS. We have documented that they have dramatically cut not just the resources, but the ability of people to implement it. There has been a refusal to hire people in some cases who make for the government $5,000 an hour or more. Now, these are people who would be dealing with audits for the people who, you know, for one reason or another give themselves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to filling out the tax form. So this audit function makes a significant amount of money for the taxpayers, money that doesn't have to come from increased taxes or reduced services. Mr. Speaker, there is a tax gap. It is well known and well documented, $400 to $450 billion or more a year. Being able to adequately fund the Internal Revenue Service will enable the government to deal with an amount of money that is due and payable and owing, and it is usually because they have more money to lose track of or to be able to have different alternatives for how they characterize it or how they choose to move forward. It tends to be larger, they tend to be business enterprises and people who have more money. But it is not just dealing with the audit function. I had a fascinating roundtable discussion in my hometown last month where I had attorneys and accountants who specialize in the practice dealing with tax practices. They were lamenting the problems, not just the fact that there isn't effective audits anymore. They think there are very few. But it is more fundamental than that. They often will look one of their clients in the eye and say: Yes, you are right, there is a problem. The mistake is in your favor, but because the service level has been allowed to deteriorate so badly, it will cost you more money in my fees to get the $500 or $2,000 error corrected. That just makes one cringe. Now, the notice that somehow putting money to implement the Affordable Care Act is not customer service is ludicrous, and I tried to get my friends on the other side of the aisle to talk to me about customer service. How is it not customer service to help people with the tax credits that are involved with the Affordable Care Act, which over 7 million people get? How is it not customer service to make sure that it is administered fairly for over 16 million people who fall under the Affordable Care Act? Absolutely it is. This $500 million cut would further degrade the ability to provide the service that not only should we require, but our employees in the IRS want. I would strongly urge the rejection of this ill-guided proposal. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, had I been present for the vote on H.R. 4570, the ``100 Years of Women in Congress Act,'' which expands Department of Agriculture programs for research and extension grants to increase participation by women and underrepresented minorities in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, I would have voted ``aye.'' Also, had I been present for the vote on passage of S. 719, a bill to rename the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Great Falls, Montana, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, as we struggle to deal with the epidemic of opioid addiction and thousands of deaths from overdose, it is ironic that later this afternoon I will be part of a debate at the Brookings Institution about whether or not marijuana should continue to be a Schedule I controlled substance because, according to the statute, it has no medical value and a high potential for abuse. Well, as part of the national drug reform movement, this much is clear: marijuana is less addictive, by far, than tobacco, alcohol, and cocaine. Indeed, the percentage of people who become addicted is less than 9 percent, as opposed to alcohol, cocaine, and tobacco, which is much, much higher. It carries this designation of Schedule I despite the fact that millions of people have used marijuana and there has never been a single documented case of an overdose death. As to medical value, it has repeatedly been confirmed. The New England Journal of Medicine did a survey in 2013 of practitioners who overwhelmingly supported the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. It has been endorsed by 15 State medical associations, the Epilepsy Foundation, and the American Nurses Association. People who have looked at it objectively agree that there is a huge potential for benefit. And that, most compellingly, is borne out by thousands of years of human existence. It is used by well over a million Americans in 40 States to deal with things like PTSD and chronic pain. It is well known that it helps deal with the debilitating effects of chemotherapy for cancer: nausea and the loss of appetite. Indeed, we are having families move across the country to be able to get legal access to medical marijuana in States like Colorado because it is the only remedy that they have been able to get to give relief to their infant children who suffer a debilitating type of epileptic seizures, torturing their babies, and it works for them. Well, in the 1970s Richard Nixon rejected the advice of his own handpicked Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse and decided to make this the centerpiece of his war on drugs. A trillion dollars later and after millions of lives being affected, we are on the verge of a national effort to right this wrong. We are going to see State after State voting to follow Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and Alaska in adult legalization. It is time for Congress and the administration to reassess the flawed principle of making marijuana a Schedule I controlled drug, with all the resulting harms and none of the benefits. It is past time for action.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, this week in 2 days is April 15, the day that our income taxes are due. We have seen that day difficult enough under the best of circumstances, be made even more difficult, purposely, for millions of Americans. My Republican friends have decided to take out their differences with the IRS, their opposition to taxation, by deliberately torturing the American taxpayer. Ours is the largest tax system in the world that relies primarily on volunteer compliance. Each 1 percent where people decide not to comply costs the Treasury $30 billion. Now, most, in fact, do comply, but an ever-increasingly complex tax system makes compliance difficult. It should be noted that it is not the IRS that makes the Tax Code complicated; it is Congress that is constantly changing that Code. Sometimes it is so late in meeting its obligations with tax changes that the Service doesn't even have time to print the forms on time. In order to help citizens with Congress' complex tax system, the Internal Revenue Service runs the largest consumer service operation in the world. Last year, it was a disaster. Well, this process has been deliberately sabotaged by the Republican approach to the agency budget. It has 30,000 fewer employees than it had in 1992, down 13,000 from 2010, despite the fact that the Code gets more complex and there are more people filing returns every year. Congress should have been a constructive partner in streamlining, modernization, with new computers, but the IRS budget prevents it from modernizing information technology. It still uses applications that were running in the early 1960s. And you cannot completely computerize the simple task of answering phone calls and talking to taxpayers. When you visit the IRS offices, as I have, you find employees who are sad and angry that they are unable to meet the needs of the taxpayers. They don't like getting somebody who has been on hold for 20 or 30 minutes and then not having the time to work with them to answer their questions. It frustrates the taxpayer, and it breaks the heart of our employees. Now, it is no secret that some people forget or cheat on their taxes, but Congress has not equipped the IRS to do the audits necessary to actually collect the money that is due. This year, when we have a big deficit, there will be $300 to $400 billion of taxes that are due and owing but won't be paid. Yet Congress is deliberately trying to make it worse. They have 12,000 fewer enforcement staff, a reduction of 23 percent, and I am going back to a Ways and Means Committee where one of the proposals would cut that budget another $500 million. It is not fair to the taxpayer, it is not fair to our employees, and it makes it hard to fund the needs of our Nation. People talk around here about running government like a business. What business undercuts, underfunds, and slashes its accounts receivable department? They may think it is good politics to make the taxpayer experience as miserable as possible, but it is ultimately bad judgment, poor politics, and a disservice to the American people as we undercut the ability to fund essential government services. Many of my Republican colleagues have been looking for scandal within the IRS. Whatever problems they uncover or imagine, the real scandal is how they are treating the American public and the people who work for them at the vital service of the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Murphy. I appreciate his courtesy in permitting me to speak with him this evening. The Sun is setting on our Nation's Capitol. Many of our colleagues have returned to Washington, D.C. They are at dinner, they are with their families, they are meeting with their constituents. I appreciate his being here on the floor this evening to highlight a critical area that he has been so committed to and has worked on so hard because it is something that each and every American needs to address and needs to focus on because we are all in this together. I will say that earlier in my career as a child State legislator, I was part of the deinstitutionalization movement. It made a lot of sense. As my friend has said, we have had over a half million institutional beds. Some of the conditions were not what they should have been. Some of the treatment certainly is nothing that we would accept today. The notion of allowing people to be helped in a deinstitutionalized setting made sense for a lot of people. It is sad to say we didn't do a good job of implementing it. The institutionalization worked if we were there supporting the people who were deinstitutionalized with medication, with counseling, and with housing. And sadly, when we hit some choppy waters economically in my community and others around the country who followed what was in theory a good model, we found that there were too many people out on their own. Sadly, today, we can see evidence of the failure to do deinstitutionalization right on the streets of virtually every community large and small from coast to coast. I appreciate his efforts to help refocus the Federal partnership. Certainly there is a role for State and local government, there is a role for the private sector, and there is a role for individuals and families. The Federal Government provides resources, provides a framework, provides a legal setting, and we need to make sure that the Federal framework reflects the lessons we have learned and the realities today. I have been pleased that he has been so patient with me and others who have carried to him some of the questions and concerns that we have picked up from people in our communities who care about it. He has tackled an area that is complex, it is controversial, and there is room for give and take. I feel in the hours and hours that we have talked about this exchanging information, I have seen that he has done just that. He has drilled down, he has listened, he has incorporated, he has asked more questions, and I appreciate that because I think he is establishing a framework here with a number of our colleagues on a bipartisan basis that will enable this Congress to be able to make real progress that is long overdue. In my community, we are going to open a facility in September. We call it the Unity Center. It is a collaboration between four major hospitals to have a place where we can take people with mental problems out of emergency rooms where they can't be appropriately treated and where it is costly. All we can do is stabilize them, and then turn them back out on the street until their condition deteriorates where they pose a problem to themselves and others. As he has referenced, too much of our mental health service in this country is to be found behind bars. That is not the appropriate setting. It is not cost effective and it is not humane. We are making a small step in our community where these institutions have come together and have established a memorandum of understanding. They realize they are still going to lose money, but they are not going to lose as much. They are going to be able to give better care to a population that is very much in need. I am hopeful, Mr. Speaker, that we will be able to, as a result of the work that he is doing with this legislation and others who he is working with, that we will be able to focus that Federal partnership yet this year, to be able to have more assistance to our communities to make sure that the Federal programs are tailored to the needs of today and the experience that we have acquired. I am hopeful that we will be able to develop more tools for one of the most important ingredients in this equation, and that is the families who are too often prevented because of the regulatory framework we have. Some of this is understandable, but it shouldn't be a barrier for families who, in some cases, are the only people who really know the individual, who care about them, and who are equipped to be a vital partner with the mental health system. I look forward to further progress. I look forward to bringing back to you more information from Portland, Oregon, where we are going to have another round table discussion with concerned individuals in government, in the medical profession, and advocacy groups to make sure that the input from my community is completely reflected in this. Let me just say how much I appreciate his time and his effort, being a partner with him in this. I am looking forward to seeing the result before the final gavel comes down on this Congress.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. If the gentleman would yield, I just want to say that one of the areas that is most contentious deals with when people, like the gentleman that you have pictured behind you, are going to be compelled to have treatment. You have been open to being able to refine the protections to make sure--and this is something that varies across the country--that under the auspices of your bill that we have appropriate safeguards to make sure that the rights of the individual are respected but that we acknowledge the fact that, in some cases, the right for people to self-destruct is illusory.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. It is dangerous to them; it is dangerous to society; and it is heartbreaking for their families. I have appreciated our conversations on that, going back and forth, and what you have tried to do to be able to make sure that the balance is struck. I am confident, before we are through, that we can make sure that the other areas that require that give-and-take can, in fact, be met. I would like to thank you for allowing me to speak on behalf of it, and I look forward to the next steps.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, it is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the family and friends of Yonatan (Yoni) Suher--one of dozens killed or wounded on March 19th in a suicide bombing in Istanbul, Turkey. This horrific attack highlights the struggle we continue to face in ending these senseless acts of terrorism. Yoni was born in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, as was his father. He shared my love for the city, as well as for the Portland Trail Blazers, and visited his family there often. Though no longer with us, I know Yoni will live on in the hearts and minds of those nearest and dearest to him. I wish his loved ones all the best during this difficult time.