Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, it is clear to me, from the debate we had earlier, that it is going to be somewhat difficult to get people to debate this issue. However, let me try by being frank and yet fair to everybody. I would like to outline what happened to this bill in conference, and why I believe it is important that this motion pass. First of all, let me remind my colleagues that the Senate adopted a bill to promote ag research. It is a bill that I would assume 100 Members of the Senate support. My State is a very substantial beneficiary of ag research. The institution which I love more than anything, other than my family, Texas A&M, is a major ag research institution. Needless to say, no one should be surprised that I am in favor of ag research. In addition, I am a supporter of research in general. In 1965, we were spending 5.7 cents out of every dollar we spent in the budget on general research. That is now down to 1.9 percent of the budget on research, because rather than investing money in new technology, new products, and new science for the next generation, we are being driven by politics to invest in the next election by spending money on programs that have big constituencies in the next election rather than beneficiaries in the next generation. Again, I support agriculture research. The Senate bill went to conference on a unanimous vote, and the House passed a bill that was an ag research bill. However, the nature of the bill changed in conference, and it changed dramatically. Many other provisions were added to the conference report that were never voted on in the Senate and never voted on in the House. The major provision that I want to address in this motion to recommit with instruction is the provision having to do with food stamps. My colleagues will remember that while we had a contentious debate on welfare reform, when it came time to call the roll on August 22, 1996, we passed a comprehensive welfare reform bill on an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Part of that welfare reform process was setting much higher standards on food stamps and eliminating the attractiveness of welfare in general, and food stamps in particular. We were trying to change the law to eliminate a situation where, over the last 25 years, we had seen a change in the welfare law. People were actually being attracted to America not with their sleeves rolled up, but with their hands held out seeking benefits paid for by someone else's labor. This bill, unfortunately, takes a major step backward. This bill re- institutes $818 million worth of food stamps that were eliminated in the welfare reform bill. I remind my colleagues that the Senate did not vote on the food stamp provisions in this bill. In addition, the bill, as it was voted on in the House, did not contain these food stamp provisions. Yet, in conference, as part of the age-old logrolling process of putting a bill together to be a grab bag for everybody, a provision was added that provided $818 million worth of food stamps for immigrants. The President was a major supporter of this provision. In fact, yesterday, our distinguished ranking member, Senator Harkin, called this provision a major step toward fulfilling a promise that was made by our President. Well, our President was not for welfare reform when it was debated and basically was shamed into signing it. What he said at the time was that he intended to go back and undue major parts of it. This provision, in fact, fulfills part of that commitment. This motion is drafted very, very narrowly. It simply says to not touch the welfare benefits added back for people that were already here on August 22, 1996. Go ahead and take those provisions, but don't set out a provision in law that is giving new food stamps to people who might choose to come in the future. There is a provision in this bill that would give 7 years of eligibility for food stamps to people who come and who declare themselves refugees in the future. Under the provision in the bill, whether they come next year or 20 years from now, they can come and declare themselves refugees and qualify for 7 years of food stamps. Mr. President, I think that is providing the wrong incentive for people to come to America. Let me also say that I am a strong supporter of legal immigration. I don't want to tear down the Statue of Liberty. I don't want to build a wall around America. There is still room for hard-working, dedicated people with big dreams to come to America. But I want the dream to be of working and succeeding, not getting on welfare and food stamps. What my amendment simply says is that the one provision of this bill that is prospective whereby providing food stamps into the future for seven years would be stricken. However, the refugees and asylees who are already here on August 22, 1996, would be able to receive food stamps for seven years. Our colleagues are going to say that the world is coming to an end if we go back to conference and that somehow this bill will die. Everybody in the Senate and everybody in the House knows that ag research is not going to die. Everybody in the House and everybody in the Senate knows that crop insurance is not going to die. If we send the bill back to conference, we have an opportunity to begin to correct problems with the bill. Both the Speaker and the majority leader of the House have said, in one forum or another, that they are not in favor of this bill being considered in the House. By sending it back to conference, we have an opportunity to begin the system of inducing moderation into the bill, which I believe can speed up the day we obtain funding for agriculture research and crop insurance. Let me say again that I support agriculture research, and crop insurance. I don't think we should have to pay tribute every time we put together a program to try to promote job creation and economic growth in America. I don't think that every time we have an agricultural bill that tries to move us toward a more competitive agricultural system, we should have to pay tribute to people who always want an add-on such as the food stamp provisions in this bill. The provision adding food stamps was little more than a tribute for allowing this bill to move forward. We can pass this bill without the food stamp provisions, but I am suggesting that we deal with one narrow part of the bill. I urge my colleagues to support this provision, because in this provision we don't take any benefits away from the restoration contained in the bill for immigrants who were here when we passed the welfare bill in 1996. Certain legal immigrants who were here when the welfare bill passed will have benefits restored by this provision. This motion, if defeated, would send the signal that we want to create new benefits in the future that would allow you to come to America and can obtain food stamps. That, I think, is the wrong signal. It is not a signal I want to send. It is a signal that I think is destructive for those of us who believe in legal immigration. So I urge my colleagues to support this motion to recommit with instructions. I remind my colleagues that the conference has not been discharged. We can go back to conference this afternoon, and this provision can be voted on. If it is adopted in conference, it can come back to the Senate, and it would probably pass unanimously. If it is rejected in conference, we at least know there has been a vote in conference. The point is, this bill is not going to die if we adopt this motion. I want people to look at this provision and vote on it on its merits. If they will do that, I will be satisfied. I reserve the remainder of my time. Mr. LUGAR addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me explain why the amendment does make sense. And let me do it by going back to our welfare reform bill. I would like to remind my colleagues, not that public popularity is the be-all and end-all--it can often be misleading in the short term--but I am sure many of my colleagues are aware that when asked what action by Congress in the last 4 years they most approved of, the American people, in a set of polls taken last month, said ``welfare reform.'' What we did in welfare reform is, we set higher standards for welfare and we defined work as the norm, and we defined welfare programs as temporary programs to help people help themselves. When we wrote the welfare reform bill in 1996, and I was active in it and was a conferee, this provision with regard to refugees was a hard- fought provision. Prior to the 1996 bill, there was no limit on the amount of time that a refugee could get food stamps. Many people, including myself, wanted to set a strict limit on it, again with the idea that we were talking about transitional help, but we wanted people to come to America, as millions have come--and millions of Americans have come as refugees; millions of Americans have come as refugees since World War II. We know that many of these refugees are really economic refugees but they claim to be political refugees, and often it is very difficult to tell the difference because countries that have bad political systems normally have bad economic systems. So, after a real battle in conference, endless days of negotiations, we settled on a 5-year limit. Now, in this bill, in a bill that, when it was considered in the Senate where it was amendable, there was no food stamp provision, there was no debate on this issue. When it was considered in the House, there was no provision expanding food stamps, no debate, no ability to amend it. Now we have a conference agreement that adds $818 million back in food stamps that were denied as part of welfare reform. This bill is a major step toward overturning the welfare reform bill. I have singled out this provision because I think it is critically important. Whenever proponents of the provision in the bill debate it, they always like to talk about children, disabled, and elderly--and don't we all?--because, obviously, that is where we can focus our concern. But the provision that I am trying to deal with here has nothing to do with children, disabled, elderly, who were in the country on the day we passed the welfare reform bill. The provision that I am trying to deal with is the prospective provision which simply tries to draw a line and says that we passed a welfare reform bill, we negotiated this out, and here we are, 2 years after it went into effect, raising the number of years that you can be on food stamps under the new welfare bill as an immigrant by an additional 2 years. Why are we doing it? To quote one of the proponents, ``It provides seamless protections so people can come, get food stamps, become citizens, and continue to get food stamps.'' I want people to come to America to go to work. I want our assistance program not to be a way of life. We debated this issue 3 years ago, and those who believe that welfare should not be a way of life won on an overwhelming vote. Yet, over and over and over again, in little parts and parcels, we are undoing one of the major legislative activities that we have undertaken in this decade. This bill is such an activity. So, I am not for the food stamp provision, but I am not asking my colleagues to strike it out. I am asking my colleagues to ask the conference to reconvene and to remove the prospective provision which says that anyone coming in the future can qualify as a refugee and get 7 years of food stamps. I believe that we are, through this provision, taking a step to go back to the days, which we have recently put behind us, where we were asking people to come to America, not with their sleeves rolled up ready to go to work, but with their hand held out ready to go on welfare. This is a little issue. We are not talking about big amounts of money, but we are talking about a big principle: What do you want the beacon drawing people to America to be? Do you want the beacon to be welfare and food stamps? Or do you want the beacon to be the opportunity to live and work in the greatest country in the history of the world? So, to some people this may look like a small issue. We are not talking about much money, because this bill is a 5-year bill. Obviously, there are very few people--since you can get food stamps now for 5 years, extending it to 7 will affect only a few people in the last year of the bill. But the principle is a big principle, and the principle is, ``what kind of America do you want, and what kind of American do you want?'' I want people from all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, who share one thing--a dream of having the opportunity to come to America and work and build their dream and the American dream. That is what I am for. That is what this provision is about. I would like now, Mr. President, to yield 5 minutes to the Senator from North Carolina.

Mr. GRAMM. How much time do we have on both sides?

Mr. GRAMM. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator might have 5 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I ask that the bill be read.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the conference report be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I object.

Mr. GRAMM. I object.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, as the distinguished chairman of the Ag Committee knows, we agreed previously not to have a recorded vote today. It is my intention, when the conference report is before the Senate, to have at least one motion to recommit with instructions. So rather than have that debate today when no one is here to listen to it, when we know it will have to be debated on another day if we are going to have a recorded vote, I suggest that we simply begin the debate on this issue today and that we bring it up tomorrow, or some date in the future when we can have a recorded vote following a debate on the motion. I ask that we simply begin the debate today and that we agree on some future date to readdress this question. On that basis, I object.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I have one final amendment. I am a little bit hesitant to consume further time so I shall be brief. I remind my colleagues, we held hearings in the Finance Committee after we wrote the initial bill, and issues arose in those hearings that we want to address in this amendment. I understand that it has been approved by both sides of the aisle. Basically, we have in the bill a list of offenses for which an employee of the Internal Revenue Service may be terminated. In light of concerns that have arisen since we had the bill before the committee, I want to add two offenses to the list. One has to do with testimony we heard where members of the Internal Revenue Service were said to be threatening to audit people for personal gain. We heard an assertion that a police officer had stopped an IRS agent and was going to write him a ticket, and the IRS agent allegedly had told the officer that if he wrote the ticket, he was going to get audited. The second provision has to do with a knowing and willful failure of an IRS agent to file a tax return or pay taxes or declare income. Both of these fit, I think, perfectly into the list of very strong offenses that we have in the bill. I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. GRAMM. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GRAMM. I thank you.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, in the hearings that we held in the Finance Committee, over and over again taxpayers, who made compelling cases that they had been abused by the IRS, told us that in response to their efforts to try to stop what they considered to be unfair treatment-- whether it was seizure of their home or their business or being accused of things they claim not to have done--one thing that they were consistently required to do by the IRS in order to end the dispute, even though the Internal Revenue Service may have turned up no wrongdoing, was to sign a statement whereby the taxpayers gave up their right to sue the IRS for the abuses that had been imposed on them. I have talked to Commissioner Rossotti. He has said that he has no objection to this amendment. In addition, my staff has met with the staff of the Treasury Department, and they have suggested some changes which we have made. Basically, what this says is that if I am in a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service, they can't force me, as part of that dispute, to give up my rights. At the end of the process, if I have done nothing wrong, they can't force me to give up my right to sue them if I feel my rights have been violated. They can notify my attorney that this is something that could be part of the negotiation. I can voluntarily propose that if we can settle the case today, for example, I would be willing to pay so much and give up this right. But what this amendment does is prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from forcing this provision as part of any settlement. I think it is an important protection. With these changes, it is my understanding it is supported by my colleagues and I hope it can be accepted at this point. Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I send another amendment to the desk.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. We have a provision in the bill, a very important provision, that sets up a set of criteria where, if the taxpayer meets a test of keeping prudent records and of turning those records over to the IRS on a timely basis, that once that transfer of records has occurred and the other requirements have been met, then the burden of proof shifts to the Internal Revenue Service when someone is accused of having violated the IRS code by not being in compliance on their income taxes. This was a provision that was included in the bill under the leadership of the chairman. We, I think, generally wanted to extend it to all tax cases but because of revenue constraints we were unable to do it. I have constructed this amendment in a fashion which does permit the expanded burden of proof transfer. It delays the expansion for 6 months and sunsets it at the end of 5 years, so it fits within the revenue cap we have. I believe that once we provide this protection that we will end up not taking it back or allowing it to expire. I think this is an important protection, because on gift and estate issues, we have the same problem as income taxes, where the Internal Revenue Service enters into a dispute with the taxpayer and, in a system unlike any other system in American society, under existing law, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. This amendment would simply say that if you keep all the records that a prudent person could be expected to keep, and if you turn those substantiation records over to the Internal Revenue Service so there is no question about the fact that you have shared the information you have with them, at that point the burden of proof shifts from the taxpayer to the IRS not only in cases dealing with income tax disputes but in all other types of tax cases as well. I hope this amendment will be accepted. I have discussed it with both sides of the aisle. I believe it is strongly supported. It does fit within the budget constraint we have in the bill, so I commend this to my colleagues.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, since no one is here to speak, I thought I would go ahead and say a few words. I have several amendments I am going to be offering, and I will, obviously, speak at that time. But I wanted to let my colleagues know about a story that ran on the 4th of this month, which was 2 days ago, on KTVT, Channel 11, a CBS affiliate in Dallas. What struck me about this story is how symptomatic the story is of what we saw consistently in our hearings before the Finance Committee and how consistently this kind of thing is happening all over the country. The story was the lead story on the 10 o'clock news on the 4th of May. The story is about tax collectors who aren't paying taxes. Basically, what happened is an investigative reporter asked the Internal Revenue Service for records related to tax collectors who themselves were violating the Tax Code, and did this ever happen, and, if so, what did the IRS do about it and what kind of records were kept. It is the kind of request that government at all levels gets every day from the media. Government officials do not always like to produce the requested information but, nonetheless, it is produced. Well, the bottom line is, as you might have guessed, the Internal Revenue Service stated that it has no such data. Then an IRS employee slipped a document to the TV reporter, and the document showed that last year nearly 4,000 IRS employees did not file or pay taxes. Collectively, according to reporter O'Connor in this story, they owe Uncle Sam more than $10 million. And this reporter said that this information coming into their hand forced the IRS to break this down into local numbers. The reporter then says, ``We have learned that in north Texas, between 1993 and 1996, 137 IRS employees did not file or pay their taxes. Last year alone, 14 IRS agents owed $400,000'' in unpaid taxes in north Texas. Then what I wanted to call to my colleagues' attention is an extraordinary, at least in my mind, interview which sounds exactly like the testimony our committee heard over and over and over again. Listen to this. The reporter is asking Mary Durgin, who is Chief of Tax Compliance for the IRS--the reporter is asking the Chief of Tax Compliance for the IRS the following questions and let me just read the transcript. Reporter O'Connor. You know of no Federal liens ever being filed against an IRS employee? Ms. Durgin. Um, I'm not aware of any. The reporter asks the next question. Reporter O'Connor. Do you know how many reprimands have been given in the last year? Ms. Durgin. I don't. Reporter O'Connor. Do you know how many employees have been suspended? Ms. Durgin. I don't. Reporter O'Connor. Fired? Ms. Durgin. I don't. We don't keep those statistics. Reporter O'Connor. Why would you not know that if you're the head of-- Before she can say ``tax compliance,'' Ms. Durgin says, ``because I don't count them.'' Now, I intend to send this to the Internal Revenue Service this afternoon and ask them to check this out, but this is exactly the kind of answer that we have gotten over and over and over from the Internal Revenue Service. And I intend to offer an amendment, probably tomorrow, that will give the head of the Internal Revenue Service the power to terminate any employee of the Internal Revenue Service who fails to file a tax return that should be filed or who willfully violates the tax laws of this country. Now, I don't know what is behind this story. I have obviously not verified what has been said by this reporter. But I would have to say that if 4,000 IRS employees last year either didn't file a return or didn't pay taxes, that is a very, very serious charge. And I think the head of the IRS ought to have the ability to terminate the employment of somebody whose job it is to collect taxes from other people and at the same time they don't pay their own taxes. Now, as you can imagine, this story interviews a businessperson who had their assets frozen, had all kinds of problems because there was a charge that he had not paid his taxes, and that is contrasted against the assertion that 4,000 IRS agents last year either didn't file a tax return or didn't pay their taxes. I think this is a very serious matter. We ought to have a provision in the new law that says without regard to any other provision of law, if you work for the Internal Revenue Service and you willfully violate the Tax Code, you ought to lose your job. I think that is something that is needed. I think it is a provision that we were already looking at, but I wanted to make my colleagues aware of this story on the CBS affiliate in Dallas night before last and about this extraordinary interview with Mary Durgin who, although she is the Chief of Tax Compliance at the IRS, doesn't know if any action has ever been taken at any time, in any place, under any circumstances, against any agent who violated the Tax Code. That seems to me to be extraordinary, and, quite frankly, I would have trouble believing it had we not had exactly the same thing and the same answers given to very similar questions before our committee where, in fact, with all of the concerns that were raised last year, with all of the statements that were made about wrongdoing, little evidence exists that any individuals who had accusations made against them in those hearings or related to those hearings has had any corrective action taken. As I said at the hearing, and it is something that I will certainly repeat tomorrow in offering this and other amendments, my concern with the Internal Revenue Service is not that you get some bad people when you hire 100,000 people. I mean, people are humans. They make mistakes. Some people seem to be more prone to them than others. And very smart people from time to time do very dumb things. With the IRS employing 100,000 people we ought not to be surprised that we have some people who do bad things and some people who do dumb things. But that is not what alarms me about our current situation at the Internal Revenue Service. What alarms me is we seem to have a system where people who do bad things never have bad things happen to them. We have a system where, when people do good things like going to their supervisors and saying that other people are violating the law or violating the procedures of the Internal Revenue Service, bad things tend to happen to those good people. The difference between a good system and a bad system is not that under the good system you don't have people who do bad things. You do. But under a good system, people who do bad things end up being punished; people who do good things end up being rewarded, and as a result, people learn from rewards and penalties and so you get more good behavior and you get less bad behavior. That is the hallmark of a good institution. Looking at all the abuses that we heard about during the Finance Committee hearings, the amazing thing to me was not that these things happened. The amazing thing is it doesn't appear that bad things ever happened to the people who did the bad things. It doesn't appear that people who violated the law, violated procedures, abused taxpayers, abused their fellow employees, were penalized. It appeared as if--based on the testimony that we heard--the IRS system was set up to protect its senior people or to provide an environment in which you reward unproductive and undesirable behavior. You would have to conclude that the structure has historically been one aimed at protecting its own versus protecting the taxpayer instead of creating a system that tries to reward productive behavior. I think this is something we need to deal with. I think the bill that is before us is a dramatic improvement over the bill in the House. I congratulate Chairman Roth. I think he has done an outstanding job. I think when we started these hearings many people were skeptical about them. I certainly was skeptical. But I think the hearings have brought to light real abuses. And the important thing, obviously, for a legislative body, is not just to find out what is wrong but to try to do something about it. I think we have a good bill before us. I don't think it solves all the problems. I would have to say I am very skeptical about this advisory board. I don't understand an advisory board that is supposed to advise the Secretary of the Treasury and the IRS Director, and the Secretary of the Treasury is a member of the advisory board. I don't understand how you advise yourself. It seems to me that gives the Secretary of the Treasury two bites out of the apple, and that is probably a mistake. There are very real ethical problems that have been raised by the relevant agencies of Government that deal in ethics in having the head of the Treasury Employees Labor Union as a member of this advisory board, since that member, by the very nature of his job and source of employment, has a constant conflict of interest. I don't understand how you can change the ethics rules of the Government to put people in a position where they constantly have a conflict of interest and expect much to come out of this advisory board. So, frankly, I know many people are talking about the advisory board. I know they have high hopes for it. I have very little in the way of high hopes that we are going to get much out of this advisory board. But what I think we are doing in this bill that will dramatically change behavior is, No. 1, we are shifting the burden of proof in disputes between taxpayers and the IRS. We are going to have some people who will say that in doing so we are jeopardizing our ability to collect taxes because the taxpayer is the only person who has access to the financial data and records that substantiate the claims made on the individual tax return. I think we have come up with an innovative way of resolving this. Let me give you the argument for shifting the burden of proof, and then describe the innovation that I think answers those concerns. If you commit a crime, the police come out and investigate the crime, they gather evidence, they turn the evidence over to the prosecutor, the prosecutor evaluates the evidence, and in doing so, evaluates not only whether a crime was committed but evaluates the work of the police department and any abuse it might have committed along the way. And if the prosecutor is convinced there might be a case, he takes it before a grand jury that evaluates the work of the police, the work of the prosecutor, and the facts. Then, if the grand jury indicts a person for a crime, they go into court where people have a jury of their peers, they generally have an elected judge or an appointed judge, and they have an independent prosecutor. Our problem with the Internal Revenue Service is that we are dealing with one agency that is literally investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped into one so that we have no effective checks and balances. As the ancient Greeks once observed, power corrupts. That is basically our problem in the Internal Revenue Service. We have not fixed that problem, in my opinion. But the way we tried to get at it is to at least give you one thing you have if you are accused of being a common criminal, basically saying if you are a taxpayer you ought to have rights at least equivalent to a common criminal in dealing with your Government. The right that we want to guarantee is that the burden of proof is on the IRS to prove that you did something wrong, whereas now it is literally true that if you are accused by the Internal Revenue Service of violating the Code, the burden of proof is on you. Here is the innovative way we have tried to protect our ability to collect taxes and guarantee this right as well. I thank Senator Roth for working with me on this and for the solution that he and his staff have come up with. The way the bill works is, if the Internal Revenue Service accuses you of violating the law or violating the rules with regard to the collection of taxes, if you present to them on a timely basis the financial data that a reasonable person could be expected to have kept, if you turn it over to them when requested, at the point that the taxpayer has demonstrated compliance with those requirements, and only then, the burden of proof shifts from the taxpayer to the Internal Revenue Service. I think that answers all the concerns that were raised by IRS, all the legitimate concerns that were raised by law professors around the country about shifting the burden of proof. There were other concerns that this would produce endless hearings and rulings before courts. But we have dealt with that concern. Another reform contained in the bill and which I think is very important, and is something that I have been a champion of along with our chairman, is strengthening the principle that if you are audited, either in your family's tax return or your business tax return, and you had to go out and hire lawyers and accountants to defend yourself--and you may spend thousands of dollars defending yourself--that at the end of the day if you are found to have complied with the law, that the IRS is responsible for reimbursement of the costs you have incurred in defending yourself. So if I am an honest taxpayer and I paid my taxes and the IRS audits me and I have to go out and hire an accountant and a lawyer to defend myself, and we go through 18 months of contention, and finally there is a ruling that says I didn't violate the law, under our bill now, the Internal Revenue Service will now find it more difficult to avoid having to compensate me for my cost of hiring a lawyer and hiring accountants and defending myself. Not only is that fair, but that is going to change behavior, because we are going to make this data public, we are going to list publicly and report to the Congress on the instances where the IRS has had to pay people these costs. We are going to force the Internal Revenue Service to make better judgments about whom to go after and whom not to go after. A final wrinkle on this, which I think is very, very helpful, is that if you offer to settle with the Internal Revenue Service and you, say, offer to pay $15,000 to settle this dispute, and the IRS says, ``No, we won't take your $15,000; we are going to take you to court,'' if at the end of the proceedings you are found to owe less than $15,000, not counting penalty and interest built up during the time where the dispute exists, then the IRS will have to pay your legal and accounting costs from the time you made the offer until a final settlement is eventually reached. This is a long way from the checks and balances we have in the criminal justice system. I would like to go further in separating the functions of the IRS so that we have more checks and balances, but I think our bill is a dramatic improvement over the House bill. I am very proud of what we have done. I hope we can do more. I congratulate our chairman. I understand that Senator Thompson is here, so I yield the floor. Mr. THOMPSON addressed the Chair.