Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Wednesday told a tea party rally that the Internal Revenue Service should be abolished because keeping income secret from the federal government was "part of freedom."
"You know, the IRS audited me one too many years in a row," King explained at a Tea Party Patriots rally in Washington D.C. "And I wondered, 'Why are they in my kitchen, why are they looking through my books, why are they asking me these Monday morning quarterback questions?' And I went back out and climbed back into the seat of my old bulldozer and the smoke went out the exhaust stack and my ears. And I thought, 'I'd like to get rid of the IRS.'"
"I don't need them poking through my books, I don't need them telling my pastor or my priest what he's going to be able to preach from the pulpit," he continued. "In fact, it's not even the government's business how much money you make. That's a part of freedom."
The Iowa Republican asserted that "this big brother's gotten a lot creepier than George Orwell ever thought it would get."
"For the last 30 years, I've been for abolishing the IRS and establishing a fair tax," King said. "A national sales tax on sales and service to give us back our freedom. And every time that little Johnny or Sally puts a -- buys their baseball cards or their Barbie doll clothes, they put a couple dimes on the counter for Uncle Sam."
"And every time they do that with a national sales tax, they are reminded how expensive our federal government is. And we will turn this society and culture over and we will raise generations of conservatives that love this country, that understand free enterprise, demand less from government, not more from government."