An Invasion of Privacy
In an attempt to pay for their irresponsible socialist spending package, Democrats have put forward a radical proposal that would authorize the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to spy on the bank accounts of every American. This is an outrageous invasion of privacy and contradicts U.S. societal norms.
Following public outcry, Democrats recently revised their socialist regulatory surveillance plan. However, their "scaled back" version is hardly different in its real impact. Democrats' snooping plan would require banks to monitor any accounts with more than $10,000 in annual deposits or withdrawals – including inflows and outflows made with physical cash, transactions with a foreign account and transfers to and from another account with the same owner. So along with weaponizing the IRS, Democrats want to turn local and community banks into new regulatory divisions, implemented with $80 billion added to the taxpayers' tab.
While the Biden Administration claims this regulation would help the IRS identify tax cheats amongst high earners, the reality is that every American who pays rent or a mortgage would be targeted. Beyond rent or mortgage, hardworking American families could be opened up to surveillance simply by investing in a child's college education, taking out a loan to buy farm equipment or start a small business, starting a part-time job to make some extra money or even transferring money from a savings account to a checking account or vice versa. Indeed, this surveillance scheme is not about preventing tax evasion of wealthy people or large corporations, it is about taxing blue-collar workers and family-owned businesses, farms and ranches, so Democrats can subsidize programs and fund tax giveaways in blue states.
In response to this highly invasive proposal, I recently signed two letters to the IRS and U.S. Department of the Treasury expressing my opposition to any threshold for Americans' bank accounts to be spied on. Additionally, I am a cosponsor of the Prohibiting IRS Financial Surveillance Act, which would prohibit the Treasury from requiring any financial institution to report the ins or outs of any account maintained by the institution.
Aside from the intrusion of privacy, the proposal also raises very real fears related to cybersecurity, especially considering that the IRS is often targeted by cybercriminals and has experienced multiple data breaches in recent years. Allowing the IRS to collect sensitive and personal financial information could pose a very serious threat to millions of Americans if another breach were to occur.
I wish I could say that the Biden Administration's desired overreach of private banking data ended here. Sadly, there is more cause for concern over his nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, whose confirmation hearings are currently underway in the U.S. Senate. This position oversees the charter, regulation and supervision of all national banks. A 1989 graduate of Moscow State University on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship, Omarova has applauded Russia's economic system as superior. Even more alarming, she has written that the Federal Reserve should take over consumer bank deposits, end America's current banking system and instead use Venezuela and China as models for our financial system.
In their ongoing quest to transform America into a socialist nation, Democrats are seeking to inherently change our financial system and spy on citizens, even without any accusation of wrongdoing. This is not only an astonishing breach of privacy that presents serious cybersecurity risks, it is simply un-American.