Rand Paul sues the IRS and Treasury Department

27 Jun, 2015 by Rachel Alexander

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Rand Paul has always been one of the best fiscal hawks in Congress. He’s not scared to take on the big boys and causes that some might shy away from. Now he’s suing the IRS and Treasury Department over their overreaching: digging into the private information of American citizens who have money in bank accounts overseas and claiming that gives them the power to negotiate deals instead of Congress.

Rare reports,

The administration has used the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as their justification for these unilateral negotiations. Paul argues that this violates the constitutional authority granted to Congress to negotiate trade deals.

According to Bloomberg, James Bopp, the head lawyer on the lawsuit, believes this is an intentional circumvention of the Constitution by FATCA:

“The president can only rely upon his authority and he has no authority in the Constitution for this,” Bopp said in an interview on Thursday.

Bopp, a longtime conservative activist, said the other plaintiffs are Americans who live abroad and they’ll be challenging other portions of FATCA and related bank-disclosure requirements. It could be a tough case. Courts—remember the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling in 2012—are typically very deferential to the government’s authority to tax. Bopp said the problem is the requirement to disclose confidential information without a warrant.

Rand is always on the lookout for government overreach; last year he sued the NSA over its unconstitutional warrantless surveillance. With Rand in Congress, you know you’ve got a bulldog protecting you from an overly intrusive federal government.