WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) today said the Obama Administration used the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to intimidate Americans who disagreed with the administration’s policies, according to a report on a bipartisan investigation released today by the Senate Committee on Finance.

Senator Roberts, a senior member of the Committee, said, “We have an arm of the federal government that is complicit in an effort to deny a free and open society as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

“Kansans are fed-up with these scandals and what they view as a clear abuse of power by the Obama Administration. They are demanding accountability. The targeting of Americans for their political beliefs tramples on our First Amendment rights. This bipartisan report is just the beginning. We intend to introduce further legislation to make sure this never happens again. A good first step would be to pass the my bill to stop the IRS from making any new rules regarding the treatment of tax exempt organizations.”

The Finance Committee investigators examined the treatment of organizations applying for tax-exempt status. The interviewed more than 32 current and former IRS and Treasury employees and reviewed nearly 1.5 million pages of documents. As required by law, members of the Committee were briefed by Committee staff with special authority to review private taxpayer information in a number of closed-door briefings on the findings and recommendations of the report before the Committee voted to approve the report earlier today.

The key Republican findings of the investigation include:

• There was systemic targeting of conservative groups;
• Anti-conservative bias influenced decisions;
• IRS clearly misled congress about the handling of these cases;
• IRS stymied the investigation by not preserving relevant records.

Senator Roberts has been an outspoken critic of the IRS. Earlier this year, Roberts took aim at the scandal-ridden IRS by introducing a bicameral bill with Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Ill.).  The Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act would stop cold further attempts by IRS to exploit bureaucratic loopholes to restrict the free speech rights of the same types of tax-exempt social welfare organizations victimized in the IRS political targeting scandal.

Senator Roberts also introduced the “Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act” to require federal employees to be current on their federal income taxes, and would prevent federal personnel who are delinquent in paying a federal tax liability from receiving a bonus or cash award. Exceptions are made for tax debt being paid pursuant to an agreement with the IRS and for certain hardships. According to the Inspector General, close to $3 million was awarded to IRS staff with violations on their records, with about half of that amount going to people with tax violations on their record.

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