OPINION

Oversight needed

Trump tax returns should be seen

Americans don't want an unchecked president. Members of Congress who claim a love of liberty, pink hat ladies, folks with snake-festooned cars, and would-be patriots prepared with arms to fight tyranny should all take a moment to consider the Treasury Department's refusal to transmit President Trump's tax return information to Congress, as required by law. As Patrick Henry explained in 1788, "the liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

From the time of the creation of the income tax, all tax records were considered "public records," but originally Congress allowed their inspection only when an order of the president was given. In 1924, however, Congress struggled under this arrangement to obtain records as it investigated the Teapot Dome bribery scandal and other corruption probes involving the Harding administration. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon second-guessed Congress' requests for data as non-legislative and used arguments parroted today by Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Congress, recognizing a critical weakness in its oversight abilities, felt compelled to pass a law mandating that the executive branch release tax-return information to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee upon request. The law uses the word "shall," which bears the connotation of command in Western jurisprudence, and can be found codified in Section 6103(f)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Despite the arguments you may hear about "witch hunts" and politics being used to undermine confidence in this law, it was created specifically to allow Congress to investigate the personal actions of executive branch officials including the president and his closest advisers.

Section 6103 also provides stiff criminal penalties, including jail, for any person who has had access to taxpayer information and releases it. These tough restrictions were created in 1976 in response to President Nixon's efforts to harass members of his "enemies list."

The release of taxpayer information was one of the issues that congressional Republicans sought to investigate in 2013 regarding IRS official Lois Lerner and her decision-making process related to nonprofit groups illegally engaging in politics. The accusation was that Lerner was acting to deny tax-exempt status to conservative organizations and that she had released taxpayer information in violation of Section 6103. While everyone in the country had reason, and perhaps a duty, to suspect the motives of congressional Republicans as political, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, valued the oversight wishes of his minority-party members, and more importantly, the prerogative of Congress and his committee to obtain those records. Therefore, on May 20, 2013, a letter ordering a vast amount of taxpayer information was requested by the Finance Committee from the Treasury Department.

At the time, it was my job as general counsel of the Senate Finance Committee to manage the document request and identify which staff would be authorized to access the documents being delivered to the committee. Despite the heated political atmosphere, the committee obtained the records, both sides had access, and the committee issued a bipartisan report in 2015 which concluded there was "gross mismanagement at the highest levels of the IRS," and that "groups on both sides of the political spectrum were treated equally in their efforts to secure tax-exempt status."

Without 6103 authority, the Congress would have been subordinated to the Obama administration and unable to investigate the Lerner matter.

Americans should crave congressional oversight and the balancing power to obtain information. Regardless of which political party holds possession of the political branches of government, citizens should be alarmed and aghast to witness a supine Congress being belly-tickled by any president.

As Patrick Henry also said in 1788, "show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty."

------------v------------

Mac Campbell, a native of Harrison, served as deputy staff director and general counsel of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee during the 113th Congress. He resides in Fayetteville.

Editorial on 04/29/2019

Upcoming Events