We are live on capitol hill this morning where irs commissioner John Koskinen is set to testify on cybersecurity. Hell be appearing before the Senate Finance committee. Live coverage here on cspan 3. We expect it to start in just a few minutes. Again, waiting for the start of testimony from irs commissioner John Koskinen this morning. Hell be talking about cybersecurity and how the irs protects the information of taxpayers. This is taking place before the Senate Finance committee. Just a couple moments away. While we wait for this to get started, elsewhere on capitol hill today, visits continue for Supreme CourtJustice NomineeMerrick Garland. Hes meeting with 14 senators today, seven democrats, six republicans and one independent. So far, he has had meetings with 21 senators, 18 democrats, 3 republicans. Oneonone meetings with senators to take place in their offices today. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley was up first and they started at about the 7 45 today. There was no coverage of that meeting. Afterward, senator grassley tweeted out, had pleasant breakfast with judge garland this morning. Explained why the senate wont be moving forward with his nomination. The next president will decide after the people have a voice. Other meetings set for today include senator murkowski of alaska. Its set to start about 10 15 this morning. Later this afternoon at 4 00, its senator booker, democrat senator booker of new jersey. Republican senator toomey start also at 5 00 p. M. Eastern. No coverage of that. And then tomorrow, more meetings with senators, senator king, warner, ayotte, senators murray and mccaskill. Thursday, meetings with senator portman, baldwin, flake, republican Judiciary Committee member, and then senator bennett and senator warren. Still a couple minutes away from testimony from irs commissioner John Koskinen talking about Cyber Security this morning. We understand the meeting is going to start a little later than expected. Want to tell you about some more programming coming up live here on cspan 3. U2 lead singer bono. Hell be joining state department and u. N. Officials testifying on the role of foreign aid and the resources needed to combat violent extremism. That will start live right here on cspan 3. While we wait for remarks, well take you back to this mornings washington journal for a discussion on campaign finance. Were talking about money and politics. The i pampact of the decision. Policy director at the Campaign Legal center. Christian burg is former deputy counsel at Citizens United. A bit of a History Lesson here. Remind us what Citizens United was about and what changed as a result. Sure, thanks for having me. Citizens united, a lot of people lose the fact this is a Small Nonprofit Organization trying to make a movie about hillary clinton. They wanted to make their film, produce the film and run Television Ads about it. When they look at the finance laws, realized their were sill and criminal penalties. If they were to run Television Ads saying come watch our movie. So they went to court really to just promote film. They went to court for some basic First Amendment rights. A lot people say, oh, Citizens United is about corporations. Its about corporations being people. Thats really not why Citizens United went to court. They just want to show the movie. Take us to 2016. Impacts of that case that youre seeing todayed in 2016. What were seeing in 2016 is the impact of not only sit steps united but also speech now, another case that was decided at the appellate level. But we have no shareholder protection and we have single candidate super pacs. None of those supposedly talked about in Citizens United, but other results that we have. So we have a decision that was wrongly decided in the sense that it created court went beyond and created this right for corporate free speech if you will in elections. But we are not even getting what the court promised. Were getting none of the disclosure that the court voted for. We do not have the ability of shareholders to know what is being spent. And we have single pac, single candidate super pacs coordinating closely only in the Legal Definition are they somehow independent. So we really have a wild west of money and we of course then have the dark money groups. Its hard to lay that necessarily totally at the feet of Citizens United. I think the Internal Revenue service has to claim a lot of credit for these groups that could have foreign money in them. We have no idea really what the source of the money is. Theyre spending significant anlt amounts to influence. Were not only talking about the president ial level but also the congressional and even state races. So the president ial level gets a lot of attention. The billion dollars raised so far in this campaign cycle, thats just the president ial cycle, not the center of elections. Christian, back to you, that wild west term, do you think its become a wild west . I really dont think it has become the wild west. I think when you look at superpacs, which is what a lot of people talk about these days, thats all transparent. We know where the 100 million raised to support jeb bush came from. We can see that in the fac reports. Certainly across the spectrum, i think there has been this worries that corporations are going to buy elections. It hasnt come to fruition. When we look at this cycle, were just not seeing it happen. This notion that the superpac money is transparent because its disclosed is not true. What we have is some disclosure at the federal Election Commission of where the superpac money is coming from. If one of those donors to the superpac is a group called lets say americans who love america, we have no idea where that money is from. So it is very limited and very inefficient and probably, you know, we dont even know where this money for the superpacs is coming from. Weve had llcs that have made contributions. The notion theres disclosure for superpacs is a bit of a misleading characterization. Christian, Citizens United, not the first ruling on money in politics. What was the legal precedent this case was built on . When you hear people blame Citizens United for a lot of things, there was legal precedent before that. Oh, sure. I think you have decades of legal precedent that made clear that money is speech. We go back to the 70s. What was that about . I mean really this was about whether or not in part whether you could curtail how much an individual candidate could spend on their own race. You couldnt limit that. You just couldnt. Money is speech. Money is a proxy for speech. I actually think this notion that money is speech, its not exactly what buckley said. There are a number of issues that play in buckley. Everything from expenditure limits, contribution limits. Limits on what candidates can spend themselves. These were all in the package. The court in that case did not say money is speech, but it did say it had serious implications for the First Amendment. I think Justice Stevens and the nixon case got it much more on point. He said money is not speech. Money is property. Obviously, he has not won the day with the court that has had 54 rulings in the last several years, but theres a very interesting notion here about how you apply the First Amendment to the notion that money is speech versus how you apply those protections if money is viewed as property. Let me promote the lines. If you want to join in the conversation, phone lines are open. Republicans. Democrats. Well get to your calls in just a second. To that point, buckley, 1976, Citizens United, 2010. Mccutchen. 2014. For those who want to limit spending, what are the wins they have had . Are there wins you hang your hat on on the Supreme Court level . I dont want to limit spending. The point is you have a system in which average people have very little ability to have any kind of impact on the races that are occurring. I want more speech. The question is, i want more speech by more people. I want more participation. We have a system now. It was actually raised in mccutchen by the dissenter saying we have a discussion particularly after mccutchen that got rid of the aggregate contribution limit. As Justice Breyer put it, the ability to drown out the rest of the voices. This is really a kw about amplification. We all want to have a system in which every american not only can but wants to participate. We dont have that right now. Are people being drown out . I really dont think so. I certainly dont think mccutchen led to that. Mccutchen we said of 2,700 given to one candidate isnt corrupting. Why not be able to give it to as many candidates as you want . Thats all we did there. Thats all the courts did there. Really i think postCitizens United people have more speech, they have more opportunities to speech. They can join together with their friends, with their peers. Hes asked i proceed without him. Well be happy to have him participate when he comes. Well, good morning. Its a pleasure to welcome everyone to todays hearing which weve entitled cybersecurity and protecting taxpayer information, unquote. These are really important issues that the finance committees been working on for some time. In june of last year for example, we had a hearing on the theft of Internal Revenue service data affecting taxpayer information. Much has happened since that time. At the urging of the finance committee, the irs, state revenue commissioners and leaders of the tax return preparation industry came together last year to convene a Security Summit which resulted in new information sharing agreements to help identify suspicious activity in the tax filing and refund process. We look forward to hearing more about that effort today. Weve also seen unprecedented growth in the scope and scale of cyberattacks aimed at stealing personal information and billions of dollars from our taxpayers. Last year alone, cyber criminals obtained access from several large health insurers, exposing tens of millions of americans to potential Identity Theft. Foreign governments gained access to poorly protected government databases including a treasure trove of information at the information of office of personnel management. Today, we will focus on three separate aspects of this problem. First, we will consider the ways the irs authenticates taxpayer identities from data thieves. To gain even more information about taxpayers or to file false returns and obtain refunds under stolen identities. Second, we will examine how the irs uses its resources to improve cybersecurity. This will include some discussion about the irs future state plan which the agency has developed in order to adapt to the realities of the 21st century. The ongoing efforts of the irs state revenue collectors and private tax preparers to see what can be accomplished. To protect taxpayers from fraud. Taking a look at our witness table, it is clear this is not a typical lineup of witnesses. Challenges to cybersecurity require not only smart and persistent leadership at the top but also technological expertise and skills down on the ground so today we not only have with us the heads of the irs, the Government Accountability office and the treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, weve invited subject Matter Experts on the relevant issues from each of those agencies to testify as well. Thats a total of six witnesses. I suspect each of them will bring unique and important insights to this discussion. In closing, ill just say while we are clearly making Real Progress in this area, the challenges are continuing to grow and criminals behind this kind of data theft are getting more sophisticate and aggressive. Seemingly by day. American taxpayers and their livelihoods are their targets. In other words, we have a lot of work to do. My hope is well continue to be able to work on these issues on a bipartisan basis in order to do right by the American People. [ inaudible ] good morning, chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the irs ongoing effort has. As the chairman noted, im delighted to have our chief Technology Officer with me today for any specific technical questions you may have. Securing our systems and taxpayer data continues to be a top priority for the irs. Even with our constrained resources, we devote significant time and attention to this challenge. We work to protect our main Computer Systems from cyberattacks and to safeguard taxpayer information stored in our databases. The systems withstand more than 1 million malicious attempts to access them each day. Were continuing to battle a growing problem of stolen identity refund fraud. Weve made steady progress. Weve found the type of individual we are dealing with have changed. Now were dealing more and more with organized crime send dates here and in other countries. So they can do a better job of impersonating taxpayers. We joined with leaders of the Software Agency and the states to create the Security Summit group. This is an Unprecedented Partnership that is focused on making the tax filing experience safer and more secure for taxpayers in 2016 and beyond. Our collaborative efforts have shown concrete results this Filing Season. Over the past year, weve seen three examples of what eidentit thieves are capable of and why we cant let up in this case. Weve detected and stopped unauthorized attempts on our website irs. Gov. One of the Services Targeted was our get transcript online application used by taxpayers to obtain a copy their prior year return. Another was an online tool to retrieve a lost Identity Protection personal Identification Number or ip pin. Taxpayers who previously were victims of Identity Theft used these pins to prove their identity when they file a return. The third was a tool that some people used to generate a pin number when they efile their tax return. In all three cases, criminals were trying to use our online tool to help them pretend to be legitimate taxpayers and sneak false returns past our fraud filters. These incidents, which unfortunately in the case of the get transcript access, resulted in the loss of information for thousands of taxpayers. Have shown us that improving our reaction time to suspicious activity isnt enough. We need to be able to anticipate the criminals next moves and attempt to stay ahead of them. The ongoing work of the Security Summit group will be critical to our success here. As we confront the challenge of Identity Theft, were also working to expand and improve our ability to interact with taxpayers online to meet taxpayers increasing demand for digital services. Were aware, however, that in building towardings this enhanced online experience, we must continuously update and improve our ability to verify the identity of taxpayers using these services. Taxpayers will only use these services if theyre confident they are safe and secure. Were in the process of developing a strong framework. We have a delegate balance to maintain here. We need to keep the criminals out while letting the legitimate taxpayers in. Our goal is to have the strongest possible authentication process for Online Services while maintaining the ability of taxpayers to access their data and use irs services online. Congress can provide critical support by providing adequate resources for these efforts. We appreciate the 290 million in additional funding for fiscal 2016 which included funds to improve cybersecurity and fight Identity Theft. Sustaining and increasing funding in this area will be critical as we move forward. Another way congress helps us is by improving Tax Administration and cybersecurity. One of the most important requests we have made is for the reauthorization of streamlined Critical Pay Authority, the loss of which has made it very difficult if not impossible, to recruit and retain employees with expertise in highly technical areas such as information technology. Chairman hatch, Ranking Member wyden, this concludes my statement. Will be happy to take your questions. Thank you so much. In order to ensure we have the most robust discussion possible, weve invited the head of three vital government offices to testify as well as the subject Matter Experts in the relevant areas from each agency. Weve heard from ou