mr. koskinen, miss olson, very nice to see you both. thank you very much for your service and being with us today. i want to say, mr. chairman, i'm delighted we're having this hearing and i commend you and senator hatch for holding it. my colleagues hear me say from time to time there are three things we need to do for deficit reduction if we're serious about it. we've seen the deficit come down $1.4 trillion in 2009. last year was only $680 billion. this year expected to come in about $550 billion. and then drop a little more and start going back up again. if we're serious about deficit reduction. we need to do three things. entitlement reform, save programs for our kids. doesn't savage old people or poor people. we need tax reform to bring down corporate rates more competitive with rest of the world and generate revenues for deficit reduction. third thing to look at everything we do in government around how to get better investment for our money. gao spent a lot of time in recent years looking at this. how do we get, make sure in terms

mrs. pat koskinen, wife of the speaker. jerry srmky, "buffalo news" washington bureau chief and chairman of the npc speakers committee and past president. speaking over speaker. debra solomayo, speaker member who organized today's event of the thank you, deb ralph. john dalrymple, irs deputy commissioner and guest of our speaker. marilyn bee wax, senior business editor national public radio. rec live svensson, executive editor of aarp. jose calderon, treasury department recreation association. [applause] it has been called the worst job in washington. [laughter] need i say more? if that's at case, running the internal revenue service didn't get any easier after a controversy erupted last year over irs scrutiny of tea party groups. the acting commissioner was forced to step down amid critsystem that the irs, that the irs was unfairly singling out these groups in reviewing their applications for tax-exempt status. in the wake of that controversy john koskinen took the helm of the irs. it is a tough job but koskinen is no stra

mr. president, one other item. this morning i.r.s. commissioner koskinen will testify before the finance committee. i'm sure members will be remindings him of this and i know several sent him a letter, too. but i would like to undermine the point. commissioner coughs kin nen recently led congress to believe that his agency will not be imposing antifree speech rules before this november election. it is a point he reiterated again just the other day. so congress plans to hold him to what he's been leading the americaamericantheamerican peopd he needs to prevent the i.r.s. from stepping on the first amendment altogether. he needs to stop this proposed regulation just as the secretary of the treasury told us he could do, if he wanted. income, the house of representatives recently -- in fact, the house of representatives recently voted to halt it. remember, tens of thousands of americans made their opinions known directly to the i.r.s. about this regulation. it was an unprecedented response and nearly all of the comments were opposed. the comments came from straight across the political spectrum. so com