Taxpayer Identity Protection Act of 2019

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, after a 35-day government shutdown, more than 800,000 Federal workers and their families are finally back at work. Their families have endured unnecessary and needless hardship over the past several weeks because, frankly, the Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, was more determined to try to win the political battle than solve the problem. I could give the same comment to our friend the Democratic leader here in the Senate. I hope now, after we have been through this exercise in futility, that our colleagues will take seriously our responsibility to solve the problem before us, and that is to reach an agreement so we don't end up in the same position 3 weeks hence when this continuing resolution expires.

I tell people that we solve problems like this every single day here in the Congress. You don't read about it, necessarily, or hear about it because when we build consensus and negotiate compromises, it is not news. The only time it is news is when we disagree and when it is broadcast across cable TV or the subject of talk radio or social media.

It is unfortunate that dedicated public servants were caught in the crosshairs over a partisan fight on border security. What we have seen over the last months is that many Members desire to score those political points and win a fight against the President, and that desire is much greater than their desire to build legislation that benefits the American people.

There is a solution to be had. As I said, we do it every day. The only question is, Are we willing to work together to find it? I know I am.

I have been speaking with many Members of the Texas delegation, both Republicans and Democrats, to try to find that common ground for our constituents for border security. We don't consider these to be political footballs or talking points; we consider these matters to be part of their daily lives and part of our responsibility as their elected representatives.

In the last few days, I have had the chance to be in Dallas, TX, and also in

Austin, TX. I was in Austin, TX, to talk about the CyberTipline we reauthorized working with Facebook and Microsoft and other social media platforms to talk about how we can work together to combat child pornography and child exploitation, using the authority of the CyberTipline. We were joined by the new U.S. attorney there, John Bash. I asked him whether his prosecutors who were prosecuting these cases or the FBI agents who would investigate them or his support staff who support the U.S. attorney's office--whether any of them were getting paid, and he said no. But everybody showed up at work, doing their job, fighting the scourge of child exploitation, even though they weren't getting paid.

Ditto in the Northern District of Texas, where I visited with the U.S. attorney, who gave me the same story. We were there talking about the scourge of human trafficking. Erin Nealy Cox, the U.S. attorney in Dallas, pointed out that, yes, the prosecutors were there at work, the investigators were there, and the support staff were there, even though they were the ones probably earning the most modest paychecks of anybody in the office. Everybody was there, doing their job, even though during these 35 days they had missed two different Federal paychecks.

Thinking now about the solution to our standoff on border security, I wanted to mention that a couple of weeks ago the President flew to McAllen, TX. Senator Cruz and I joined him in the Rio Grande Valley to hear from the experts. By ``the experts,'' I don't mean folks who run for office here in Washington, DC. I mean the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, and Department of Homeland Security experts who actually work on the ground there along the border.

We also met with mayors and county judges and other folks who live in those communities and are most concerned about safety and security but also the economy of the border region. We discussed with them what sensible border security actually looks like.

We know that physical barriers didn't use to be a partisan issue when the Senator from New York--the Democratic leader--Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton all voted for the Secure Fence Act back in 2006. We called it a fence then and not a wall, but it was a physical barrier, and it was a nonpartisan issue.

That was then and this is now. When we were talking about physical barriers along the border, my friend Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino said something that stuck with me, and I have repeated it a number of times, and I think it could be a lesson to all of us about how to approach this entire debate. He said that if law enforcement officials say where barriers are needed, he is all in, but if politicians say where they are needed and they are trying to micromanage border security, consider him a skeptic.

I think what people want--and my sense is what my constituents along the border region and across the State of Texas want and, I dare say, across the country--is to come up with effective solutions that will make our border more secure. Since Texas has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, of course, I have thought about this a lot, and I have listened and learned a lot about this. What I have been told and I believe is that at any given place along the border, you are going to have some combination of three elements: physical barriers, technology, and personnel. We need a complement of each of those things in this border security bill that hopefully we will be voting on in the coming weeks.

Many areas along the border are subject to high pedestrian traffic. They need physical barriers. That is why they make sense in El Paso and San Diego and Tucson, for examples. All of these saw a massive drop in apprehensions after fencing or physical barriers were put in place, along with a complement of technology and border agents when they were deployed in the 1990s and 2000s. We know that barriers can work. We have seen it proven time and again.

We all agree that we don't need barriers across the entire 2,000-mile southwestern border. We don't need a great wall from sea to shining sea across the border. One example comes readily to mind. Big Bend National Park, for example, is home to massive canyons, and some of the cliffs reach more than 3,000 feet high along the Rio Grande River. It is a spectacular and beautiful place. It would not only be impractical but completely wasteful to build a physical barrier on top of a towering cliff. That is just one example of where you might want to use some other parts of that triad of technology and personnel because a physical barrier wouldn't make much sense.

There are others who have suggested that we use the natural barrier of the Rio Grande River. Right now, much of that river is filled with something called carrizo cane, which makes it harder for the Border Patrol to actually locate people trying to enter the United States illegally. It reduces the effectiveness of that natural physical barrier of the Rio Grande River. We need to find a way to eradicate that in a way that will not only allow that river to be more of a natural barrier but also provide greater visibility for the Border Patrol.

In some areas, as I said, physical barriers, either new, repaired, or replaced are desperately needed. In others, surveillance technology, such as sensors or drones, will do the trick. Many additional personnel are needed to improve efficiency or alleviate staffing shortages. It doesn't make sense to have a physical barrier if there is no Border Patrol agent to detain somebody entering the country illegally or to interdict the drugs that come across the border.

As my friend Judge Trevino said, politicians shouldn't be the ones deciding exactly where along the border each of these three elements is applied. That is why we have asked and will continue to ask Customs and Border Protection--the experts--what we need and provide funding to implement the changes they have asked for.

I think it is a statement of the obvious to say that, in addition to improving the physical security across our border, we need to make changes in our border security approach and immigration system as a whole. Unfortunately, we are not even dealing with the larger problem of our broken immigration system.

Several years ago, I introduced legislation to the so-called Gang of 8 immigration bill that we were debating at the time. The legislation I introduced was called the RESULTS amendment. I believe the foundation of that legislation should be incorporated in any future legislation we come up with here in the next few weeks. One of the main requirements was for the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a plan to achieve operational control of every single border sector, meaning a 90-percent border apprehension rate. Requiring this sort of metric or apprehension rate will provide a clear, objective way to measure border security. Ironically, the way we measure border security now is that we know how many people are detained, but we don't know how many get away. It is a strange way to count effectiveness by counting the ones we detain but not the ones who get away--which obviously we can't do. If we come up with a better way to measure border security with a clear- cut metric like a 90-percent operational control requirement, I think it would provide a better way for us to determine how to efficiently spend the tax dollars we are talking about, which we are stewards of here in the Congress, and ensure that we are focusing our resources on the highest priority areas. This requirement would allow us to do that.

That particular legislation, the RESULTS amendment, would also require increased surveillance and provide solutions to commonsense problems. For example, it would have prevented violent criminals from acquiring legal status, provided law enforcement with critical national security and public safety information, and mitigated the problem of visa overstays. This RESULTS amendment would have strengthened biometric requirements.

It is ironic, as we talk about border security and immigration, that we turn a blind eye to the 40 percent of illegal immigration that occurs when people enter the country legally and overstay their visas. Unless they commit some other crime in the course of their time here, they are largely not located. So we need to find a better way to enforce all of our immigration laws, including visa overstays.

We can't ignore the fact that our border is not only a place that needs security but that is important to the economic vitality of not only my State

but of our country. The financial impact of legitimate trade and travel is enormous. As a matter of fact, $300 billion worth of goods flow back and forth through Texas's ports of entry alone in a given year. That is why this type of legislation is so important--because it provides resources to significantly reduce wait times at border crossings, which makes the movement of people and goods faster but no less secure.

Finally, this legislation took a stand against the brutal human rights violations we see along the southern border by stiffening penalties on abusive human smugglers and transnational criminal organizations. There may have been a time when the so-called coyotes were a mom-and-pop operation. ``Coyotes'' is just the name for human smugglers. Now it is big business, and the same criminal organizations that move drugs and economic migrants also traffic in human beings for sex and other involuntary servitude. It is no longer a mom-and-pop operation, to be sure, and we need to make sure the penalties for this illegal activity are increased and stiffened to meet the challenge of transnational criminal organizations.

I believe that all of these points still deserve a place in our debate today. I look forward to working with our colleagues in the coming weeks to create meaningful and lasting change to strengthen our border security as well as to fix longstanding problems with our immigration system. I believe we can find common ground, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will follow through in their commitment to negotiating in good faith so that we do.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, after the longest shutdown in government history, Federal employees across the country are finally returning to work. National parks are reopening, grant programs are up and running again, and those who depend on essential government services are now being helped by our Nation's public servants.

One of the things that impressed me the most during the shutdown was, as I met with our Federal employees who were affected, their dedication to their jobs and to the services they were providing to the American people. Like the rest of the Members of Congress and people in this country, I was thrilled when we were able to end that shutdown last week, and I was especially pleased to work with my colleagues to make sure government operations would return to normal. This shutdown should never have happened.

For 35 days, partisan gamesmanship forced government Agencies to close their doors, and more than 380,000 Federal workers were furloughed and another 450,000 employees worked without pay.

These Federal workers, some of whom live paycheck to paycheck, were forced to have very difficult conversations with their families on what bills will not be paid this month and how to make ends meet. I remember I was at the Coast Guard station in New Hampshire last week meeting with members of our Coast Guard who were talking about the Coast Guard cutter that is stationed there--the Reliance--heading out that morning and the families of those Coast Guard members who were on the Reliance not having any idea when they would again be paid.

Thankfully, these 800,000 employees and thousands more Federal contractors are returning to work. Unfortunately, the prolonged economic effect of the shutdown and the morale of the Federal workforce is going to last much longer.

A report released today by the Congressional Budget Office found that during the shutdown, the economy took an $11 billion hit, including $3 billion that is gone forever, which we are never going to be able to recover. When people aren't paid, they don't shop. They don't travel. They miss payments. They default on loans. They can't participate in our economy if they have nothing in the bank.

Although the shutdown has ended, some Federal employees who have gone without a paycheck for over a month still may not get paid until the end of this week. I know everybody is trying to make sure those paychecks go out as soon as possible. They can't go out soon enough for those workers who have missed their paychecks.

As the President continues to threaten another shutdown in the coming weeks, Congress needs to take additional action to protect Federal workers. I am cosponsoring three bills that would provide some financial security to those employees. These bills would eliminate penalties for Federal workers who make early withdrawals from their savings plans, require the government to pay back all Federal employees with interest, just as the private sector does, and they would ensure that excepted Federal employees are eligible for unemployment insurance compensation.

What we know happened during the shutdown is that those people who were working couldn't collect unemployment because they were working, even though they weren't getting paid. That is something we would never allow the private sector to do.

I was very disappointed to hear the President and White House officials say over the weekend that if the President doesn't get what he wants, he is going to shut down the government again. The American people, our economy, can't afford another partisan shutdown that jeopardizes our Federal workforce and does nothing to increase border security. Our focus now needs to be on working together to pass bipartisan legislation that secures our borders and funds our government.

Protecting our borders shouldn't be an exercise in partisanship. In the past, in the Senate, we have been able to garner support from across the ideological spectrum to fund commonsense proposals that provide effective security.

If we look at this chart that traces appropriations for Customs and Border Protection from 2014 to 2018, we can see that Congress has consistently increased funding for Customs and Border Protection each of the past 5 fiscal years, providing nearly $60 billion for the Agency. In 2014, we provided $10.6 billion; 2015, $10.7 billion; 2016, $11.2 billion; 2017, $12.1 billion; and 2018, $14 billion. It is consistently increasing the dollars that are available.

Just last year, Congress provided $1.3 billion for border fencing on our southern border--$1.3 billion last year. I am not sure everyone in the administration knows that is how much money we have provided. The money has yet to be spent on the actual construction of proposed fencing projects.

As we are thinking about how we spend our money on border security, we need to be spending it in a way that is smart. We should not be putting aside money we can't spend yet when there are other needs we have for those dollars.

We need to build on these proposals moving forward. We need to focus on technology, on infrastructure, and we need to focus on the personnel who are needed at the southern and northern borders to provide actual security that works. We need to make targeted investments and innovative technologies that provide comprehensive surveillance at our borders and ports of entry, along with increasing personnel and physical infrastructure where necessary.

As a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds Homeland Security, I have supported these investments in the past and so has the majority of the members of the committee. We have worked in a bipartisan manner to secure our borders.

I have supported funding for targeted fencing in vulnerable areas, funding for more Border Patrol agents, for better surveillance, for screening technologies, and for increased security at ports of entry. I intend to continue to support commonsense efforts such as these.

Unfortunately, providing billions of dollars to fulfill a campaign promise to build a wall that has no plan that has been presented for how to do that is really not a serious proposal. It is unlikely to solve the problems it seeks to address.

Our efforts to secure the border should focus on solutions that will stem the flow of opioids, fentanyl, and other drugs that have decimated our communities. Last year, New Hampshire had the second highest rate of

overdose deaths due to opioids, primarily fentanyl.

Physical infrastructure and some fencing in high-risk areas can help to disrupt drug trafficking across our borders, but it should be done in conjunction with and not at the expense of other technologies that allow law enforcement to identify and disrupt criminal activity.

Several years ago, Senator Hoeven and I--when he was chair and I was ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee-- visited the southern border. We had a chance to talk to Customs and Border Protection officials, to immigration officials at the border. They talked about the drugs that come across at the ports of entry. In Laredo, we saw dogs and CBP agents looking in a pickup truck for an area in front of the gas tank where they thought drugs were being secreted.

We are not going to intercept those drugs that are affecting our States and communities by building a wall. We have to have new screening technologies at our ports of entry, new technologies that utilize artificial intelligence and advanced imaging so they can assist in identifying contraband and weapons that are hidden in commercial cargo.

Sensor technologies and other surveillance techniques, such as unmanned aerial systems, or drones, allow our border agents to expand their region and respond immediately to illegal activity at our borders. When resourced and deployed appropriately, these types of smart investments are far more likely to interrupt the flow of narcotics than a costly and ineffective border wall.

It is also important to remember that the United States and Canada share the longest international border in the world, and the northern border may not face the same threats as those posed at the southern border, but transnational criminal organizations and other bad actors still attempt to exploit vulnerabilities and enter the country illegally through our northern border.

Coming from a State that shares a small portion of our border with Canada, I have heard from law enforcement authorities in New Hampshire. Our law enforcement officials face unique challenges with enforcement and security. These challenges include a lack of broadband in highly rural areas that impedes law enforcement activities. If we see somebody coming across the border in northern New Hampshire from Canada, we can't pick up a cellphone and call law enforcement because we don't have cell service in northern New Hampshire along our border.

Truly comprehensive border security must recognize the threat at our northern border and invest in technologies to address the unique challenges that law enforcement faces there. We need broadband access in northern New Hampshire and all along our northern border.

We also need to improve the functioning of our immigration port system. We really need comprehensive immigration reform, but we are not going to get there, I don't think, by the February 15 deadline. We can look at what is slowing down our immigration court system and help support those efforts to adjudicate immigration cases fairly and expeditiously and reduce the enormous immigration court case backlog.

Again, as a ranking member of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Department of Justice, I have supported strong funding to increase the number of immigration judges, including an increase of $59 million for fiscal year 2019. This increased amount is, in fact, the President's request that would support new immigration judge teams. We already put that money into the 2019 budget, if we are allowed to go forward with what the Appropriations Committee in the Senate agreed to.

Our immigration courts currently have a backlog of more than 800,000 cases waiting to be heard, and the shutdown exacerbated this problem by forcing more than 80,000--80,000--court hearings to be canceled. The average wait time to hear an immigration case is already longer than 2 years, and these unnecessarily canceled hearings will be rescheduled into 2020 and beyond.

This shutdown-caused delay means years longer that people who should be deported, who may pose a threat in this country, will be able to stay here and years longer that the people who may deserve relief, who should be allowed to stay in the United States, will have to wait in limbo.

Now that the shutdown has ended, now that cooler heads can prevail, and we can look at what makes sense to secure our borders, look at what we have already done, how we can build on that and how we can address legitimate concerns about what is going on at our borders, it is time for all of us--Republicans and Democrats--to put aside gamesmanship and to support commonsense proposals.

It is my hope that the conference committee that has already been appointed to negotiate funding for the Department of Homeland Security will focus on the solutions that work rather than proposals that score political points. This shutdown took an enormous economic and emotional toll not only on our Federal workforce but on everyone who accesses government services.

As we craft a bipartisan proposal to fund the government and secure our borders, let's not forget the impact that has had on the people we serve and on the potential impact if we don't get this resolved by February 15.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, there has been a lot of conversation about the damage to our economy and to the basic operations of government from the shutdown. Rightfully so, it is something we should talk about and spend some time trying to figure out how to manage this for the future, what shutdowns do to our future.

What has been interesting is how absent that same conversation has been over the last 2 years as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle actively worked to shut down the basic operations of government by not allowing nominations to proceed in the normal process.

In December, with little fanfare and into early January, 386 nominations from the Trump administration were returned back to the Trump administration with a ``no action''--386 people. Those were judges, those were potential board members, those were individuals, many of them Deputy Assistant Secretaries of different Agencies, individuals who keep the basic functioning of government open and working. Three hundred and eighty-six of those nominations had no action on this floor because something very different was happening during the last 2 years. It had not happened like this before in the beginning of any Presidency--in the first 2 years--that his nominations were blocked on the floor not with a vote, with time.

In the past, with nominations, a person would be nominated by the President. They would go to the committees. They would get a full background check investigation. There would be questions for the record. The committees would then have an open debate in the committee. They would vote as a committee. If they were voted out of committee, there would be additional questions for the record. Then, once those were done, they would get an up-or-down vote. Often those were voice votes, even here. It was something that was assumed because they had been approved by committees, and the background checks had been done.

In the last 2 years, 128 times, Members of the Senate required what is called a cloture vote--one more hurdle to go through--so that literally they would have to file cloture on those, allow for an intervening day for them to sit out there, and then 30 hours of debate on that person--30 hours of additional debate. That is after the intervening day. You have 24 hours, plus another 30 that is all set out there, to add a little additional time.

With over 1,000 nominees whom the executive branch would do, it is not possible to get through all of those if you continue to request an additional 2 days in the process to work on each of them.

For individuals to prevent these different Agencies from working and functioning, to prevent the activities of government, you can just request cloture votes over and over again--128 times to basically slow down the Senate so much and to slow down the workings of government all over DC so much that it can't operate at its capacity.

This has to be resolved.

Two years ago, I saw this trend that was moving in the Senate, and I said that long-term for the Senate, this will damage the functioning of government and of the Senate. We have to address it.

So 2 years ago I asked for a reach-out to say: How do we actually resolve this? We had some ongoing meetings. We had a full committee hearing dealing with the issue of the nominations process and how to resolve this in December of 2017. That was after months and months and months of meetings in preparation for that.

We had a markup in April of 2018 to talk about how we could resolve this and what proposals are out there.

I had numerous conversations with Republican and Democratic Members of the Senate to be able to resolve the issue in the Senate because, although in the past you could always request a cloture vote on someone if there was someone truly controversial, this was being used differently. This was not being used to address someone truly controversial; this was being used to shut down the functioning of government.

Many of those individuals--once they did get their cloture vote and that obligatory time--passed with 80 and 90 votes. They weren't people--I have heard people say that if Trump would put up better nominees, then this would be easier. It wasn't that. It was purely dilatory, to slow down or shut down Agencies' operations based on not allowing them to hire staff to actually do the job. That government shutdown, which has been ongoing for 2 years' time, will continue to go until this Senate resolves it.

So after 2 years of meetings, I am making a proposal to this body: We need to fix this. We need to fix the nomination process to have an orderly process so that when there is a controversial nominee, they can be addressed with additional time on the floor, even past the committee time, even past the background checks, even past the additional questions they are asked--to give additional time but in a reasonable way so we can continue to operate as the Senate.

My simple proposal is that we have 2 hours of additional debate, if additional time is allotted, and, quite frankly, that is after the intervening day, so there would be a full day of debate and then an additional 2 hours on the next day that would be allotted to give full time to anyone who may be a problem. That is 2 hours of additional blocked-off time in addition to the additional day that is put in place. I think that is plenty of time.

If it is a Supreme Court Justice we are talking about, if it is a Cabinet official, maybe 30 hours would be the best option for that, as well. So we would do 2 hours for most nominees, 30 hours for Cabinet level and for the Supreme Court or circuit courts. That

would give plenty of time to do additional debate, and it would simplify the process.

This proposal is not really all that controversial. I have talked to many of my Democratic colleagues, and they seem to nod their heads and say: Yes, this is a better way to resolve it. The answer I am getting back is: Let's vote for that now but let it not start until January of 2021.

Their assumption is that they are going to beat President Trump in an election, and they will take over, and they certainly don't want the Senate to function when there is a Democratic President the same way it is functioning when there is a Republican President.

My gentle nod back to them is that there is absolutely no way we should ever agree to that. Why would we ever do that? What is happening is, the last 2 years of this shutdown--the slowdown of all of these Agencies, which has happened by blocking all of these nominees--have created this muscle memory in the Senate, and if we don't fix it now, it is going to keep going.

My Democratic colleagues who say ``We are going to continue to block you for the next 2 years the same way to shut down the functioning of Agencies'' with some delusional belief that 2 years from now this will not happen to them if they happen to win the Presidency--that is false, and they know it. If we don't resolve this now and allow this President to be able to function with his nominees, as any President in the past has, then this is going to just keep going, and it will hurt the long- term functioning of our government. So it is an absurd thought to say: We will vote on it now, but it will not actually take effect until 2021. The reasonable thing is, let's resolve it now.

This simple proposal I am putting out in the next few days will make it public, and in February I hope there will be a meeting with the Rules Committee to allow open debate in the Rules Committee, for Republicans and Democrats alike to look at this issue and resolve it, to make any edits or changes. If there is a different way to resolve this, I am open to any other resolution. But for the long-term health of our government and of the Senate and how it operates, we have to resolve this because we can't have individuals hanging out there for over a year and expect that this is going to get better.

Let me give you some examples. For over a year, the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services sat out there and then was returned back to the President at the end of the session and will have to start all over again. It is the same with the Chief Counsel for Advocacy in the Small Business Administration, the inspector general in the Office of Personnel Management, Governors for the U.S. Postal Service, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce, the Ambassador to Colombia, the Ambassador to Morocco, and the General Counsel for the Department of Navy. These were all individuals who were out there for over a year with no action, waiting.

We will not get the best and brightest in our country to set aside their life for a nomination process that is over 1 year and then goes back to the White House, and then they have to start all over again the next year, and maybe it goes another year. Who in America can put their life on hold for all of that time? We want the best and brightest to be able to serve. Blocking them with slowdown tactics will prevent that from happening in the future.

I am trying to be fair in this process. Let's do this the right way, the way we all know it should be done. Let's take it to the Rules Committee. Let's put a proposal out there to fix the nomination process. Let's get the 60 votes that are required to resolve the nomination process through the Rules Committee to the floor of the Senate and actually fix that as a standing order. Let's resolve it now, lest this drags on for another 2 years and it never gets better.

This has been a 2-year process to get to this point, and in the days ahead, when we release this text, I hope my colleagues will engage in reasonable conversation to resolve that. I am open to that, but I want us to fix the problem and admit that a problem needs to be fixed and solved.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is the first day in which Americans across the country are eligible to file their 2018 tax returns. I rise today to introduce with my colleague from Alabama, Senator Jones, the Taxpayer Identity Protection Act. Our bill seeks to help prevent American taxpayers, including our seniors, from falling victim to identity theft and tax refund fraud.

Last year, the IRS received nearly 142 million individual income tax returns. Nearly 75 percent of these returns were eligible for refunds. For the most part, these refunds are the return of dollars belonging to taxpayers that were overwithheld from their paychecks in the prior year. Millions of American families eagerly await these tax refunds-- money they may need to pay off debts, settle medical bills, or plug gaps in the family budget.

Unfortunately for some Americans, these refunds never come or are long delayed due to identity theft. Criminals have figured out that, in many instances, it is cheaper and easier for

them to steal taxpayers' identities and hijack their tax refunds than it is to traffic in drugs or rob banks.

Identity theft-refund fraud occurs when a criminal files a false tax return using a stolen Social Security number and other sensitive personal information from sources such as hospitals, schools, or assisted living facilities, sometimes by recruiting employees to steal that personal information. The fraudster then uses the data to prepare fraudulent tax returns. The thieves make sure to file early--as soon as the tax season opens in January--to increase their odds that they can get a tax refund before the real taxpayer who is entitled to the refund files his or her return.

The criminals are known to hold what they call make it rain parties, where they bring stolen laptops to a motel room with internet access and work together churning out scores of these fake tax returns. These criminals work under the premise of ``file early, file often.'' Once the thieves file the fraudulent tax return, the IRS processes it and issues the tax refund. With each refund worth on average $2,778, the money can add up pretty quickly for these criminals.

This is by no means a victimless crime. In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 371,000 complaints of identity theft, including 82,000 complaints related to employment or tax refund fraud. Taxpayers who have their refunds hijacked by fraudsters often have to wait for years to get everything straightened out and to get the refunds to which they are legally entitled. Many, sadly, are revictimized year after year. A substantial number become victims of other forms of identity theft.

Worst of all, victims are often the most vulnerable. The inspector general estimates that 76,000 very low income senior citizens were victims of tax fraud-identity theft in the year 2010 alone.

In 2016, the Lewiston, ME, Sun Journal published a story about Rick Zaccaro and Bonnie Washuk, a married couple who were the victims of tax fraud. They had filed their taxes in late January of 2015, and Rick, a retired financial analyst for the Postal Service, was checking the status of their return online in early February. That is when he learned they were the victims of identity theft. Someone had filed a tax return and claimed a tax refund using their names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. That fraudulent claim was paid by the IRS while their legitimate tax filing, with their appropriate W-2s, was stuck in limbo.

It took months of worrying, frozen bank accounts, and many calls to multiple government offices for this couple to straighten things out. When they finally received their overdue tax refund, they also received something called an identity protection personal identification number, better known as an IP PIN.

To provide relief to some victims of identity theft, the IRS began issuing IP PINs to eligible taxpayers in fiscal year 2011. An IP PIN is a six-digit number assigned to eligible taxpayers that allows tax returns and refunds to be processed without delay and helps prevent the misuse of an individual's Social Security number on fraudulent income tax returns.

Here is how it works. If a return is filed electronically with an individual's Social Security number and an incorrect or missing IP PIN, the IRS's system automatically rejects that tax return until it is submitted with the correct IP PIN or it is filed on paper. If the same conditions occur on a paper-filed return, the IRS will delay its processing and any refund that may be due while the Agency determines if the return actually belongs to the taxpayer.

In 2013, the IRS began a pilot program in which it offered IP PINs to all taxpayers--not just those who were victims of identity theft--who filed their Federal tax returns as residents of Florida, Georgia, or the District of Columbia. According to the IRS, these three locations were chosen because they have the highest per capita percentage of tax- related identity theft in the country. Taxpayers in these three jurisdictions may opt in to the IP PIN program if they want that extra layer of identity protection, even if they have not been victims of identity theft.

In preparation for last year's filing season, the IRS issued nearly 3.5 million IP PINs to taxpayers. That is a substantial increase from the 770,000 in 2013. According to the IRS, within just a month, it had rejected nearly 7,400 fraudulent tax returns that had been filed electronically. As of March 15, 2018, it had stopped nearly 1,500 paper-filed tax returns. This shows that this system works.

If a taxpayer has a special PIN number that has to appear on his or her or their tax return before the IRS will process the form electronically and issue the refund, it will stop a criminal, who would not have access to that special, individualized PIN number, from receiving someone else's tax refund.

The bipartisan Taxpayer Identity Protection Act of 2019 that the Senator from Alabama and I are introducing today would expand and make permanent the IRS's IP PIN pilot program to help combat identity theft- refund fraud across the Nation. Specifically, our bill would authorize the IRS to expand its pilot program nationally in phases over a 5-year period. Expanding the program would give all taxpayers, ultimately, the opportunity to further protect themselves from falling victim to tax refund fraud and identity theft while also saving taxpayers billions of dollars every year in tax refunds that are paid not to the taxpayers who deserve them but, rather, to criminals who are impersonating the taxpayers who deserve the refund.

Having an IP PIN has proven to protect against identity theft. I am pleased to report that the IRS supports expansion of this vital program over the next 5 years.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the adoption of the Taxpayer Identity Protection Act of 2019. This is a concrete action we can take to help protect taxpayers and to ensure that tax refunds go to the taxpayers who deserve these refunds, who are entitled to these refunds, and that they don't get misdirected to a criminal who is seeking to rip off a taxpayer.

Mr. President, this is the first day in which Americans across the country are eligible to file their 2018 tax returns. I rise today to introduce with my colleague from Alabama, Senator Jones, the Taxpayer Identity Protection Act. Our bill seeks to help prevent American taxpayers, including our seniors, from falling victim to identity theft and tax refund fraud.

Last year, the IRS received nearly 142 million individual income tax returns. Nearly 75 percent of these returns were eligible for refunds. For the most part, these refunds are the return of dollars belonging to taxpayers that were overwithheld from their paychecks in the prior year. Millions of American families eagerly await these tax refunds-- money they may need to pay off debts, settle medical bills, or plug gaps in the family budget.

Unfortunately for some Americans, these refunds never come or are long delayed due to identity theft. Criminals have figured out that, in many instances, it is cheaper and easier for

them to steal taxpayers' identities and hijack their tax refunds than it is to traffic in drugs or rob banks.

Identity theft-refund fraud occurs when a criminal files a false tax return using a stolen Social Security number and other sensitive personal information from sources such as hospitals, schools, or assisted living facilities, sometimes by recruiting employees to steal that personal information. The fraudster then uses the data to prepare fraudulent tax returns. The thieves make sure to file early--as soon as the tax season opens in January--to increase their odds that they can get a tax refund before the real taxpayer who is entitled to the refund files his or her return.

The criminals are known to hold what they call make it rain parties, where they bring stolen laptops to a motel room with internet access and work together churning out scores of these fake tax returns. These criminals work under the premise of ``file early, file often.'' Once the thieves file the fraudulent tax return, the IRS processes it and issues the tax refund. With each refund worth on average $2,778, the money can add up pretty quickly for these criminals.

This is by no means a victimless crime. In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 371,000 complaints of identity theft, including 82,000 complaints related to employment or tax refund fraud. Taxpayers who have their refunds hijacked by fraudsters often have to wait for years to get everything straightened out and to get the refunds to which they are legally entitled. Many, sadly, are revictimized year after year. A substantial number become victims of other forms of identity theft.

Worst of all, victims are often the most vulnerable. The inspector general estimates that 76,000 very low income senior citizens were victims of tax fraud-identity theft in the year 2010 alone.

In 2016, the Lewiston, ME, Sun Journal published a story about Rick Zaccaro and Bonnie Washuk, a married couple who were the victims of tax fraud. They had filed their taxes in late January of 2015, and Rick, a retired financial analyst for the Postal Service, was checking the status of their return online in early February. That is when he learned they were the victims of identity theft. Someone had filed a tax return and claimed a tax refund using their names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. That fraudulent claim was paid by the IRS while their legitimate tax filing, with their appropriate W-2s, was stuck in limbo.

It took months of worrying, frozen bank accounts, and many calls to multiple government offices for this couple to straighten things out. When they finally received their overdue tax refund, they also received something called an identity protection personal identification number, better known as an IP PIN.

To provide relief to some victims of identity theft, the IRS began issuing IP PINs to eligible taxpayers in fiscal year 2011. An IP PIN is a six-digit number assigned to eligible taxpayers that allows tax returns and refunds to be processed without delay and helps prevent the misuse of an individual's Social Security number on fraudulent income tax returns.

Here is how it works. If a return is filed electronically with an individual's Social Security number and an incorrect or missing IP PIN, the IRS's system automatically rejects that tax return until it is submitted with the correct IP PIN or it is filed on paper. If the same conditions occur on a paper-filed return, the IRS will delay its processing and any refund that may be due while the Agency determines if the return actually belongs to the taxpayer.

In 2013, the IRS began a pilot program in which it offered IP PINs to all taxpayers--not just those who were victims of identity theft--who filed their Federal tax returns as residents of Florida, Georgia, or the District of Columbia. According to the IRS, these three locations were chosen because they have the highest per capita percentage of tax- related identity theft in the country. Taxpayers in these three jurisdictions may opt in to the IP PIN program if they want that extra layer of identity protection, even if they have not been victims of identity theft.

In preparation for last year's filing season, the IRS issued nearly 3.5 million IP PINs to taxpayers. That is a substantial increase from the 770,000 in 2013. According to the IRS, within just a month, it had rejected nearly 7,400 fraudulent tax returns that had been filed electronically. As of March 15, 2018, it had stopped nearly 1,500 paper-filed tax returns. This shows that this system works.

If a taxpayer has a special PIN number that has to appear on his or her or their tax return before the IRS will process the form electronically and issue the refund, it will stop a criminal, who would not have access to that special, individualized PIN number, from receiving someone else's tax refund.

The bipartisan Taxpayer Identity Protection Act of 2019 that the Senator from Alabama and I are introducing today would expand and make permanent the IRS's IP PIN pilot program to help combat identity theft- refund fraud across the Nation. Specifically, our bill would authorize the IRS to expand its pilot program nationally in phases over a 5-year period. Expanding the program would give all taxpayers, ultimately, the opportunity to further protect themselves from falling victim to tax refund fraud and identity theft while also saving taxpayers billions of dollars every year in tax refunds that are paid not to the taxpayers who deserve them but, rather, to criminals who are impersonating the taxpayers who deserve the refund.

Having an IP PIN has proven to protect against identity theft. I am pleased to report that the IRS supports expansion of this vital program over the next 5 years.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the adoption of the Taxpayer Identity Protection Act of 2019. This is a concrete action we can take to help protect taxpayers and to ensure that tax refunds go to the taxpayers who deserve these refunds, who are entitled to these refunds, and that they don't get misdirected to a criminal who is seeking to rip off a taxpayer.