Congressman Introduces Bill for Temporary Hold on IRS Audits

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) introduced a bill Wednesday that would revoke the IRS’s ability to audit taxpayers until Congress has investigated the scandal surrounding the agency’s targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups.

“Today I’m calling on Congress to halt the audit authority of the IRS until Congress has had a chance to get to the root of the misconduct within that agency,” Fleming said in a Wednesday statement. “For years the IRS has been using the power of the audit as a political weapon. Consequently, Congress must act to disarm the IRS… The IRS has breached the trust of the American people and its misuse of the authority to audit must be stopped while Congress investigates the breadth of this scandal.”

According to a release from Fleming’s office, the “Audit the IRS” bill would suspend the IRS’s audit powers for 180 days.

“What’s especially stunning is that the President, the Attorney General, and the IRS are all suggesting that this was not a coordinated attack on conservative groups or individuals,” Fleming said. “Instead, they claim this was just the misguided work of low-level employees. If that’s true, then our worst fears about the IRS may be true: countless IRS agents are going rogue and using their government-backed power to carry out personal and political vendettas.” 

He countered, “I’m not convinced that’s the case, and Congress needs to investigate to find out who authorized this policy.”

Fleming noted that the IRS is “poised” to start “enforcement of Obamacare,” so he argued that Congress “must act quickly and decisively to investigate this scandal.”

“My bill will suspend the authority of the IRS to perform any new audits for 180 days, stopping the threat of coercion and intimidation while Congress carries out its full responsibility to examine how audits were misused and who is responsible for any criminal actions,” Fleming said. “Audits should not be allowed to resume until we complete a Congressional audit of the IRS and can assure the American people that this kind of government strong-arming won’t happen again.”