Though the “Inflation Reduction Act” isn't likely to curb inflation, it includes $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to hire numerous new agents to manage the finances of Americans. The budget is an increase of 600 percent over the agency’s budget for 2021 of $12.6 billion.
The bill was approved by the Senate on Sunday and will now go to the House and is likely to be approved. The bill would nearly double the staffing of the agency currently and will eventually rise to 165,000. This is more than the total population of Tempe, Arizona.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the new employees will increase the IRS workforce to more than the number of employees of the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and the Border Patrol. They say:
That [the Inflation Reduction Act] would make the IRS one of the largest federal agencies. The Pentagon houses roughly 27,000 employees, according to the Defense Department, while a human resources fact sheet says the State Department employs just over 77,243 staff. 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.
Adding 87,000 to the 78,000 currently employed by the agency is an astounding amount. People often have criticized the harsh policies of this administration—especially with the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago in the news—but sending that many new agents to attack our own people brings it to a whole new level. Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz seems to agree:
1/x The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented. 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.
RedState's Nick Arama wrote the following about Saturday's “Vote-A-Rama” leading up to the passing of the massive 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. If we were spending money on anything, it should be border agents.
Arama is correct. It's not just billionaires and companies that will be targeted. According to the Free Beacon:
The majority of new revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny will come from those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. 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.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham explained more during a press conference on Tuesday:
If you think the federal government is out of control now, God help us when you get 87,000 new IRS agents who are looking under every rock and stone to get money out of your pocket.
Democrats were claiming audits aren't a big deal. Ask anyone who's had an audit done, and they'll say it's hell, even if Feds ultimately find that you didn't do anything wrong. “Our biggest worry in this is that the burden for these audits will land on Walmart shoppers,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas said on CNBC's “Squawk Box.”
In a letter to the Senate, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig stated that the new resources are “absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.” Surely you can trust him, can't you? The IRS would never go after Americans with lower incomes, would they? Except for targeting conservative groups like the IRS did during the Obama Administration.
The worst information is likely to surface as this bill is scrutinized over time. The massive and colossal explosion of the IRS workforce is already enough to cause concern.
