Could members of the media please move out of our way so we can begin the hearing . Mr. Horn, you can sit in that chair. Thank you. Thank you and good morning. We now convene this hearing of the oversight and investigation subcommittee on volkswagen emissions cheating allegations, initial questions. Let me start off by saying my first car was a volkswagen. It was a 76 beetle. I learned a lot about cars. I could take that thing apart continued to work. I did all the maintenance myself because volkswagen had a legacy as the peoples car to be people friendly. I loved that car. Loved it a lot. Not so much as to call it brad, but i loved that car. But i trusted the car to get me around. I trusted volkswagen would continue to build a reliable car. That word trust alone as you know is the key factor in Building Customer loyalty. That trust is what helped build volkswagen because we believed its company looked out for customers first. Then three weeks ago car owners around the world were shock
And as you know want that is something that 501 c 3 s already possess. All of the measures that i just mentioned are included in the taxpayer bill of rights. And i hope that we can count on your cooperation on these measures and others that the committee might consider to restore the credibility and integrity of your agency. I say all that, ask those questions. But to the degree you can comment on those, commissioner and then if you can cant, well certainly welcome that for the record. Well, id be delighted to give you a more detailed answer for the record. When you note the changes on our own, those are the changes in response to the bipartisan report as well as recommendations in the majority and minority report. These are not ideas that we have by ourselves. Weve said well take all of the recommendations that we have control over. The ones necessary to make sure that the delays dont happen again. Were going everything you asked us to do. With regard to the bill of rights, as you not
When you were working to establish the exchange that there was the template your website had issues and im assuming all thats been resolved and the people that went into medicaid temporarily cms approved are now out of that . All of those temporary medicaid members have been redetermined into either requalified health plans or medicaid. Great. And ms. Otoole, do you still have a backlog of about 180,000 public insurance renewals in the system . Thank you for the question, congressman. We do not. That has been resolved. Okay. And it says despite additional funds, im sure you do continue to struggle some, obviously. And again, i applaud all of you for what youre doing. The goal of our committee is to find out where we can make improvements, right . But minnesota announced that theyre going to revert to the old system for minnesota care because of mshares problems, is that true . Congressman, that is true just for a short period of time, and that is we have prioritized that functionality
Are protected. I hope this e which can count on the support of you and other high officials at the treasury. And with that what i would like to do is get you views on a few of what i think are the common sense proposals that senator grassley and i have in our legislation to make the irs accountable to the american taxpayers. Im going to read through these and ask you to hold off on commenting. But i want to get the questions in. The first one is that last year the irs proposed its own taxpayer bill of rights. If question is would you support legislation to codify the rights and make it the duty of the commissioner to ensure that irs employees are familiar with the rights. Second is the ten deadly sins created by the irs Restructuring Commission in 198 9 8 requires mandatory termination of an employee who threatens to audit a taxpayer for monetary gain. Would you support this . Number three, in your recent letter to the committee you state that the irs failure to preserve electronic rec
To the state court. And yet people say you should decide the scope question even though the underlying issue may be one of state law. And then finally to the solicitor generals new argument that theres going to be review in this court and de novo review on habeas, the statutory lang wage in 2254d is pretty broad. Quote, any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in state court proceeding, the only claim in this case is remedy. This case was filed after miller was decided. The only issue in this case is redress. And it would be very wonderful turn if you could say on the one hand that 2254d doesnt apply. But on the other hand, 1257 applies when it requires a, quote, right claimed under federal law which gets to your question, justice kagan. Is it enough thatll a state court says we voluntarily want to be bound . And the best answer to that is not only in the cases i would recommend moore which is cited in merrill dow which goes out of its way to show how federal law is binding on the