The “Inflation Reduction Act,” which as we’ve pointed out is unlikely to tame inflation, contains $80 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service to hire a staggering 87,000 new agents to slog through the financial affairs of Americans. The allocation is a 600 percent increase over the agency’s 2021 budget of $12.6 billion.
The bill cleared the Senate Sunday and now heads to the House, where it’s expected to pass. It would more than double the agency’s current staffing, bringing it up eventually to 165,000 people. That’s more than the population of Tempe, Arizona.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the IRS will have more employees than combined the Pentagon, State Department and FBI. The authors write:
This [the Inflation Reduction Act]This would place the IRS among the top federal agencies. According to the Defense Department’s website, the Pentagon has approximately 27,000 employees. A human resource fact sheet states that the State Department only employs 77,243 people. The FBI employs approximately 35,000 people, according to the agency’s website, and Customs and Border Protection says it employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents.
Eighty-seven thousand—in addition to the 78,000 already employed by the agency—is a truly staggering number. People often have criticized the draconian policies of this administration—especially with the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago in the news—but siccing that many new agents on our own people takes it to a whole new level. Ted Cruz (Republican from Texas) seems to be in agreement.
1x Donald Trump was raided by the FBI in an unprecedented move.
It is corrupt & an abuse of power.
What Nixon tried to do, Biden has now implemented: The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies.
And with 87K new IRS agents, they’re coming for YOU too.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 9, 2022
RedState’s Nick Arama wrote the following during Sunday’s “Vote-A-Rama” leading up to the passage of this behemoth bill in the Senate:
But as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) explained, perhaps few things in the bill are as bad as the lie the Democrats are trying to sell about the hiring of 87,000 more IRS agents, acting as though it’s only going to go after “billionaires” to make them pay their fair share. We should be scaling back the IRS–not building it up. We should not be spending money on border agents if we are going to spend any money.
Arama is right, it won’t just be billionaires and corporations that will be targeted. According to The Free Beacon,
According to the study by the Joint Committee on Taxation, less than $200,000 per year will generate most of IRS audits and scrutiny revenue. The committee found that just 4 to 9 percent of money raised will come from those making more than $500,000, contrary to Democrats’ claims that new IRS agents are necessary to target millionaires and billionaires who hide income.
Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina senator put it into perspective during a press conference on Tuesday.
God save us if you feel the federal government is in chaos. You will soon have 87,000 IRS agents looking for ways to make money.
My colleague Sister Toldjah wrote Monday about Democrats laughably claiming that audits are no big deal. Ask anyone who’s ever been audited, and they will tell you it’s hell even if the Feds eventually find you did nothing wrong. “Our biggest worry in this is that the burden for these audits will land on Walmart shoppers,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
In a recent letter to the Senate, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig claimed the new resources are “absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.” I trust him, don’t you? I don’t think the IRS could do anything illegal. Except maybe they target conservative groups like Obama did.
As the bill is scrutinized, more and worse news will be revealed. However, this insanely large increase in the IRS workforce is already a problem.
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