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House Democrats will today bring up H.R. 5363 to the House floor, legislation that strengthens Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions. As a standalone provision, this legislation should be taken up and passed into law. 

However, Democrats are amending the legislation to include a $2.5 billion tax pay-for that will threaten taxpayer privacy and create a new precedent to misuse taxpayer information. While H.R. 5363 contains these provisions, it should be rejected by the House.

The FUTURE Act adds H.R. 5368, legislation that could subject 31.2 million individual disclosures to large-scale sharing of taxpayer information without taxpayer consent. Thousands of bureaucrats, government contractors, and educational institutions could have access to this taxpayer information. 

This would be the third largest disclosure of taxpayer information for non-tax purposes – second only to the Census and Obamacare.

While H.R. 5363 contains this poison pill, Congress should reject the bill to uphold taxpayer privacy and protect millions of taxpayers from new pathways of misuse of taxpayer data.