Top-ranking Republicans on the House Ways And Means committee have asked its chairman not to request trump’s taxes, even though federal law explicitly gives him the power to do so. These are exactly the same Republicans who, four years earlier, insisted that they use that power to oversee Barack Obama’s administration.
“We should not weaponize congressional committees to do ‘Presidential Harassment’! We need to leave the president alone so that he may effectively govern the nation.”
After all, there cannot be investigations if we are to have government. Kevin Brady and Mike Kelly sent to the chair, basically saying you must not request the tax returns from Donald Trump under any circumstances. To do so would be harassment and outside the scope of the committee’s oversight function.
“Transparency in our government is enormously important, but must be undertaken with appropriate care,” Reps. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) wrote in a Thursday letter to Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.).
“Weaponizing our nation’s tax code by targeting political foes only serves to weaken our system of government, not strengthen it,” Brady and Neal wrote. “If there are valid concerns with financial disclosure, then let’s come together to legislate a thoughtful solution to require additional disclosures.”
Representatives Brady and Kelly were members of Ways and Means in 2014, as were several other Republicans currently on the committee. They are arguing that the committee should not want to “weaponize the tax code” by targeting individuals such as the president.
OK — a little bit of history would be in order here.
The House Ways And Means committee can and may as a matter of law obtain anyone’s tax returns. This has been since the early 1920’s (a time of the speak-easy, prohibition, gangsters, and Al Capone, who if you remember, did not pay taxes and went to federal prison as a result.) It is when congress gave the power to three committees to access the tax returns without the explicit consent of the president, one in the senate, one in the house, and one in the joint committee on taxes.
The committees may then, at its discretion, release the tax returns to the house. The Joint Committee on Taxation famously did so in 1974 when it sent its report on President Richard Nixon’s tax returns to the House. It may also release them to the public and did so when they chose to subsequently publish them. (This last part is actually law, even if trump says “this is a crime.” But, then again, he is no attorney and laws, other than those dealing with bankruptcy, are foreign to him.)
So, from the 1920’s to 2014, the committee had the power to access the tax returns. This was a time of cooperation. In order to access the tax returns, the chair of the committee needed to get approval of the opposing party’s lead to make the request. It was a joint request, signed by both Democrats and Republicans. This relationship lasted until 2014.
Then, in 2014, things changed. The committee was chaired by the Republicans. So, they changed the rules because they felt that the Democrats would not co-operate in their demands. They changed the rules to make it simply the chair of the committee had the sole discretion of requesting the tax returns. It was not a bi-partisanship venture any longer. It was to be solely “Republican controlled”.
At that time, Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee used their authority under the same provision to obtain the tax information of several private groups that were seeking nonprofit status from the IRS. They then voted to release that information publicly in a letter that sought criminal prosecution of a former IRS official for allegedly targeting conservative groups for audits.
In 2016, Donald Trump broke with precedent of the last 40 years by refusing to release his tax returns during the presidential campaign. His real issue was that he felt that the previous Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, lost the election because he released the tax returns that showed that he was wealthy. He was not going to release the taxes under the ‘excuse’ that they were ‘still being audited’. Of course, trump’s audits seem take years to complete as the original ones are still being audited. Then there was the issue of the entitlements and trump’s businesses. The whole concept is very murky and obscured.
After the 2016 election, the excuse was changed from being audited to simply “I won” and the people did not need to see the taxes to elect me.
Now, we come to two years later, and in 2018, the Republicans lost control of the house. The chairs for the committees, including ways and means, went to the Democratic members. And, the target was a Republican! The Democrats on the committee (and the Republicans as well) are holding hearings on the importance of disclosing Trump’s tax information, which would reveal how much money he makes, its sources as well as how much tax he pays.
It’s normal for congressional committees to conduct oversight of the executive branch, but Trump said during his State of the Union address on February 5th, that Democrats should lay off.
Why, they argue should congress review trump’s taxes, when the IRS is mandated to audit them and the president has already had to make disclosures to the IRS as part of the taxes? It is strange. It is exactly the same argument that was used earlier when they said that the IRS could not be trusted to perform the audit on the Nixon’s and Obama’s tax returns.
Sometimes, the GOP’s logic seems to baffle the mind. Ok, well, make that mostly because we left the realm of “sometimes” quite a while ago.
In the hearing held Thursday, February 7th, a panel of four expert witnesses testified that the committee has broad authority to request tax returns from the president or anyone else. But Republicans argued the committee had no need to obtain Trump’s returns because the IRS is mandated to audit them and the president already has to make other financial disclosures.
The witnesses, however, argued that Congress sought Nixon’s tax returns because they did not trust the IRS to properly audit the president’s taxes without undue influence, and because tax returns contain different information than what’s required by mandatory financial disclosures.
Representatives for Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have said he would review any requests “for legality,” implying the Trump administration would defy Congress ― and defy the law.
“I don’t see any wiggle room in the statute for the secretary to refuse a request,” George Yin, a tax expert at the University of Virginia Law School, testified.
Only time will tell if the president’s tax returns will see the light of day. However, the law as well as the precedence is on the side of the affirmative.
This story is taken mainly from one by the Huffington Post.