Mark Everson, who served as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service under President George W. Bush and oversaw President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty to illegal immigrants in the 1980s, plans to mount a long-shot bid for president in 2016, he said in a statement on Thursday.
“To get America back on the right track will require shared sacrifice and difficult choices which our politicians won’t entertain,” Everson said. “I’m going to start a candid, long overdue, conversation with the American people about our problems and how to tackle them.”
A spokesman for Everson, Harold Morgan, told The Daily Caller he plans to run as Republican.
Everson’s work in Republican presidential administrations dates back to the Reagan era, when Everson was deputy commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and helped implement Reagan’s law that granted amnesty to certain illegal immigrants.
In his “Letter to America” describing six issues he will emphasize in a campaign, Everson called for “reinforcing the American tradition of assimilation through comprehensive immigration reform.”
Everson also called for “fundamental tax reform,” “confronting the lawlessness of the big banks,” “re-establishing the draft in order to have a shared sense of national service,” “real, balanced reforms to our entitlement programs,” “reinforcing the American tradition of assimilation through comprehensive immigration reform” and “serving only a single term to keep re-election politics out of presidential decision-making.”
“I will execute the laws as written, not as I might wish them to be,” Everson said. “I will serve only a single term in office and not allow re-election politics to compromise Oval Office decision-making.”