The Patriot Post® · Ryan Slams IRS

Rep. Paul Ryan gave IRS commissioner John Koskinen a harsh scolding over the agencies’ stonewalling and deceit. Here are the highlights from today’s hearing: “This is unbelievable. … I’m sitting here, listening to this testimony, I just – I don’t believe it. That’s your problem. Nobody believes you. The Internal Revenue Service comes to us a couple years ago and misleads us and tells us no targeting is occurring. Then it said it was a few rogue agents in Cincinnati. Then it said it was also on progressives. All of those things have been proven untrue. … You are the Internal Revenue Service. You can reach into the lives of hard-working taxpayers and with a phone call, an e-mail or a letter you can turn their lives upside down. You ask taxpayers to hand onto seven years of their personal tax information in case they are ever audited and you can’t keep six months’ worth of employee e-mails? And now that we are seeing this investigation, you don’t have the e-mails. Hard drives crashed. You learned about this months ago. You just told us, and we had to ask you on Monday. This is not being forthcoming. This is being misleading again. This is a pattern of abuse, a pattern of behavior that is not giving us any confidence that this agency is being impartial. I don’t believe you.”