Today former U.S. Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV, 1939-2021) was brought to lie in state at the Capitol. As those who knew him remember his many years in Congress, from NTU’s perspective the Senator’s single biggest legacy was his determination to improve the everyday taxpayer’s experience with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Obituaries about Harry Reid have often described his political career in pugilistic terms, owing to his early pursuit of boxing. So it was with his stance on behalf of changing the way tax administration works. Prior to the first Taxpayer Bill of Rights enacted into law in 1988, a citizen stepping into the proverbial ring with the IRS did so as a flyweight with only one gloved hand free, facing a super-heavyweight with bare knuckles. Worse, the referee sometimes had selective vision, the timekeeper tolled the bell irregularly, and the Marquess of Queensberry-type rules that should govern the match were missing more than a few key provisions.
NTU became all too familiar with these taxpayer protection issues from the late 1970s onward, as “horror stories” from Americans outside the tax agency and sincere concerns from employees within the agency were relayed to our staff. Senator Reid’s federal tenure, first in the House (1983) and then the Senate (1987), was characterized by careful attention to those issues as well.
As Senator Reid noted, his first speech on the Senate floor was to praise the work of fellow Democrat David Pryor (AR) and Republican Chuck Grassley (IA, along with other Republicans and Democrats) on behalf of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TBR) – an NTU-backed proposal that provided procedural protections to the property and liberty of Americans encountering disputes with the IRS. As he remarked at a hearing three years later (at which NTU testified as well), “the IRS is never going to win any popularity contests. But I think we would have a much productive IRS, a much more productive citizenry if people paid their taxes out of respect for the law rather than fear. I think we deal too much with fear and we should not.”
Reid’s words could not be truer. One of the first news conferences I attended on Capitol Hill, as the lowest staffer on the NTU totem pole at the time, was in the fall of 1988, when Senate sponsors of the TBR were vowing to continue their legislative campaign into the next Congress. Senator Reid was there, promising to stand with his colleagues until victory was achieved. As it happened, a chance question at a televised Presidential debate, where both George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis pledged support for a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, pushed the proposal through that year.
Nearly ten years later, as a Communications Director for NTU, I had the honor of participating with the Senator, his colleagues, and staff at a news conference for the second successor bill to TBR. Again, our backs were against the ropes, but once more, with Senator Reid’s help we punched above our weight and eventually prevailed the next year by a major bipartisan margin.
Senator Reid could be a fierce partisan, especially in his leadership role. Of course, NTU clashed with him over many fiscal policy issues, ranging from economically optimal tax rates to the best design for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Yet, one of NTU’s guiding principles is that somewhere, common ground can always be found for taxpayers if citizen advocates and public servants are willing to look for it together. On taxpayer rights issues, Harry Reid did more than his part; he actively sought allies, including NTU, for a cause in which he believed (much in the way the late John Lewis graciously collaborated and led on the Taxpayer First Act). Senator Reid was also a key figure in the passage of federal legislation outlawing “source taxes” – which states such as California levied on the pensions of taxpayers who had long since decamped to other places but had once worked within California’s borders.
During the 1990 hearing mentioned earlier, Senator Reid took the opportunity to compose a tongue-in-cheek ode to taxpayer rights based on T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” – a poem that famously began with the line, “April is the cruellest month.” From a tax perspective, April is still not a month for celebrating, but all 12 months of the year are significantly less cruel because of the partnership between elected officials and advocates like NTU on behalf of five separate, comprehensive taxpayer rights laws passed through Congress. The work continues, in the House and Senate as well as the courts. We are grateful that Harry Reid was in our corner during this ongoing struggle for many rounds.