Just stop, it's embarrassing
If there was no desire to look at anyone's tax return, the provision would not have been there.
If it were so innocent, it would never have been said some anonymous staffer stuck it in when no one was looking.
Mr. Scofield said he found it strange that senators felt they were taken by surprise. He noted that the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Bill Young, Republican of Florida, had discussed it briefly on the House floor, and that the language had been available since Thursday for Senate staff members to read.
So stop, okay?
G.O.P. Says Motive for Tax Clause in Budget Bill Was Misread
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - Democratic leaders and senators from both parties expressed outrage on Sunday about an obscure provision in the huge end-of-session spending bill that would allow the chairmen of the Appropriations Committees and their staff assistants to examine Americans' income tax returns.
Republican leaders said that their motives had been misread and that there was never any intention to invade the privacy of taxpayers. They promised that the provision would be deleted from the bill in a special session on Wednesday before the spending measure, which cleared Congress on Saturday night, was sent to President Bush for his signature.
Representative Ernest Istook, Republican of Oklahoma, who was responsible for the insertion of the tax provision in the 3,000-page, $388 billion legislation that provides financing for most of the government, issued a statement on Sunday saying that the language had actually been drafted by the Internal Revenue Service and that "nobody's privacy was ever jeopardized." Mr. Istook is chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that has authority over the I.R.S. budget.
John D. Scofield, the spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, said that the purpose of the provision was to allow investigators for the top lawmakers responsible for financing the I.R.S. to have access to that agency's offices around the country and tax records so they could examine how the money was being spent. There was never any desire to look at anyone's tax returns, he said.
