The Wall Street Journal trumpeted the good news on Monday: “Senate Infrastructure Bill Drops IRS Funding.” It failed to mention, until deep into the article, that Democrats dropped the provision in favor of another much more robust measure to increase IRS funding.
Meeting resistance from some Republican senators over the increased funding, Senate Democrats instead are planning on increasing the revenue gathering agency’s budget by much more than the $40 billion that was taken off the table on Sunday. They will include new funding for the agency in the $3.5 trillion spending plan that they plans to pass using the reconciliation process, which they can accomplish without any Republican support.
Senate leaders, including RINO Ohio Senator Rob Portman, admitted that, in light of the Republican resistance, “there are other ways” to increase the IRS’ funding.
Said Portman:
One reason [the agreement to increase IRS funding] is [no longer] part of the proposal is that we did have pushback [from Republicans].
Another reason is that we found out that the Democrats were going to put a [much more robust] proposal into the reconciliation package … with a lot more IRS enforcement.
The original plan was touted as a “bipartisan” effort to spend money on “infrastructure,” thus lending credibility to the plan. A lack of sufficient Republican support, however, forced Democrats to change tactics and add the new funding in a way that doesn’t require any Republican support.
Increased funding for the IRS was being sold as a way to pay for the new spending. Biden administration official Charles Rettig, head of the tax collection and enforcement agency, laid the groundwork for the canard back in April. He said that the gap between taxes owed and taxes collected was about $1 trillion every year, and that all that he needed was more money to go after the tax deadbeats whom he said were cheating.
Many saw through the facade, reminding other senators of past IRS abuses. (Remember Lois Lerner and her targeting of conservative groups under Obama?) Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz had the audacity to suggest the proper thing to do with the agency. Increasing its funding, he said, would be a “foolish and dangerous idea,” adding, “Rather than giving tens of billions of dollars to the IRS to harass and persecute American taxpayers, I think we should abolish the IRS and instead adopt a simple flat tax.”
The Wall Street Journal failed to inform with its misleading headline. The progressive revolution continues unabated. The “rush to control the pass” continues as the mid-term elections come ever closer, allowing citizens to express at the ballot box their real feelings about that revolution.
