CNN

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday that "accountability will be carried out" against whoever slipped a provision into an omnibus spending bill that would have allowed two committee chairmen to view the tax returns of any American.

 

The language was caught and removed in the Senate on Saturday, but the House will have to approve the fix before the spending bill can be sent to the White House for President Bush's signature.

 

"I have no earthly idea how it got in there," Frist said on CBS's "Face The Nation." "Nobody is going to defend this."

 

Sen. John McCain said Sunday that the episode points up the problems created when Congress passes gigantic spending bills at the end of a session, before anyone has time to read them.

 

"If there is ever a graphic example of the broken system that we now have, that certainly has to be it," the Arizona Republican said on NBC's "Meet The Press." "How many other provisions didn't we find in that 1,000-page bill?"

 

After the House passed the spending bill, Democratic Senate staffers discovered that it contained a provision allowing the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees, or their agents, to examine the tax returns of any American.

 

The two lawmakers who would have gained that power -- Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Rep. Bill Young, a Florida Republican -- both said they wouldn't use it, and the Senate approved a resolution deleting the language.

 

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York called Sunday for a "full and complete" investigation into how the language got into the bill, followed by "appropriate punishment" for those responsible.

 

"This harkens back to the days of [FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover, when some unknown person could go and snoop on you," he said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."

Know one knows who put that in there though? Couldve been a republican or a democrat. Remeber the old political trick that someone cna use in this instance. A democrat adds it to the bill, tries to get it past, so that it can look like the republicans were the ones that put it in. Thats extremely common and is just as a likely as a republican putting it in.

A Republican, Istook, added the provision in the dead of night. Expect more of this from the party in power. Screw consolidation they are trying to eradicate dissent.

The problem is we need to see more about this b/c certain parts of a persons taxes are available through certain procedures, possibly even FOIA. so we need to see the details of this plan. However, this is def. a problem if it is what it appears to be on the outside