Ladies and gentlemen, before i begin i would like to ask you to join me in recognizing an Incredible Group of soldiers sailors, airman marines and coast guards behind me. They are the best at what they do do, whatever they do including putting on sayreceremonyies like this one. Thank you very much. [applause] and mr. Secretary, i couldnt help thinking as the National Anthem is played i would hazard a guess how many times you have heard it but today it was played for you and i hope you remember the lasting service. Mr. President , secretary, men and women of the Armed Forces Good afternoon. It is an honor to thank secretary hagel for his service to our nation and what a Remarkable Service it has been. It started 20 years ago when Timothy Hagel was called in and they said young man you have six months to get back into college or you will be drafted into the vietnam war. Hagel replied i tried colleges, three colleges and lets say it wasnt in the best interest of those institutions to keep
Cspan, cspan2, cspan radio and cspan. Org. Anthony foxx testified about the highway Transportation Group and was joined at the Senate Environment and pubic works hearing on transportation and infrastructure funding. This is two hours and 15 minutes. The meeting will come to order. I say to my friend the Ranking Member that the whole right side back there is oklahoma. I came in last night and they were having a dinner i thought two or three people i knew gary rid ridley would be there, he always is. But it is all familiar faces. We have a concern there is a lot of things about what is the government supposed to be doing and quite often, and the reason i got in on this 20 years ago is because this is what we are supposed to be doing. Building america and infrastructure. We understand that in oklahoma. We have gone through a process and i recall over in the house, secretary foxx knew what the biggest problem was in the Highway Trust Fund . Too much surplus. That was the problem we had. We
Our system, all of it was customized and developed in the 50s and 60s. Weve replaced that system with those expenditures. But we still have over 50 applications that need to be replaced. But to show what weve been able to do that, that refund app got 200 million hits last year. 150 million returns across just 85 are processed electronically. That was not only not possible, it was inconceivable 15 years ago. We have made substantial strides. But the 300 million on the Affordable Care act are all challenges for us. Fortunately, the Filing Season this year has been implemented. We have 145,000 foreign Financial Institutions about to provide us data under the foreign account Tax Compliance act. All of those systems had to be built and rebuilt to obama sosh that data. If we could continue with the refund the resources we needed, wed get rid of a lot of these systems. Taxpayers would be able to go on line, as they do with bank of america, wells fargo or fidelity and deal with us without pape
Theres much that we can learn from this 13year experience in how to take a more comprehensive approach, and to recognize while kinetic actions have a value all of their own certainly and thats blatantly obvious, nonkinetic actions do as well. We can do much better at that than what we have done. Thank you. General matt is my time is up, but do you have any you want to add . Very quickly senator i would point out we have to improve the process assuming there is a process. Ive been unable to identify one recently. I think it starts with the assumption we must develop a sound strategy or were going to waste lives and our treasury and our countrys future. I think, too, we need to move thor back to the senate, and not concentrated in a small but mushrooming it at the same time natural security staff that does not have the Foreign Service officers and the trained military officers who can actually develop what you are looking for here. I dont think we can adopt one preclusive form of war far
Thank you, mr. Chairman. Commissioner, welcome. I joined with other members of this Committee Last year on a letter to you after it was reported by the Inspector General for Tax Administration that more than 1100 employees had been awarded over a Million Dollars in cash rewards and more than 10,000 in timeoff awards. You made no commitments nor did you set any deadlines. And i know that youve talked a little bit about this already this morning. I just wanted, for the record to get you to speak clearly on this issue. It seems to me that its awfully hard to go to the hardworking american taxpayers and ask them to come ply with the tax laws when you have employee ins your own organization that dont comply. Can you commit to me that you are going to fix this problem and ensure that thats not going to happen again in the future . We have already adopted policies to address the problem. Not engaged in installment agreements, who are becoming compliant. But we still count those as compliant.