by Monica Showalter
Their media cheerleaders are actually hailing this "achievement."
Democrats got a twofer with the cave-in of Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on their badly misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act" of 2022, paving the way for the $700 billion bill's passage in Congress -- the joy of taxing, and the joy of spending.
Now they are hailing this as some kind of achievement, something that could save their bacon come the November midterms, or else trash the economy enough as Republicans take over to make voters cry out for the Democrats' return.
The crowing for this disastrous bill, badly misnamed as the "Inflation Reduction Act," is incredible.
"It will reduce inflation. It will lower prescription drug costs. It will fight climate change. It will close tax loopholes and it will reduce and reduce the deficit," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, said of the package. "It will help every citizen in this country and make America a much better place."
Which is entirely garbage.
Half the nightmare bill, some $369 billion,
will be dedicated to green new deal boondoggles, subsidies for the
rich, and crony shovel-outs of the kind that brought us Solyndra.
Concerned that EVs are too expensive? The Inflation Reduction Act would lower their cost, so that more Americans can choose to go electric and save money on maintenance and fuel. pic.twitter.com/WS0HPVN0uY
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) August 6, 2022
The other half, some $300 billion, will be dedicated to IRS enforcement, surveillance upgrades, and audits against small businesses, who have now been re-labeled "the rich."
Sinema got her demand to not close the carried interest tax loophole which is what her hedge fund donors wanted. Democrats replaced that with a provision to tax businesses even more. Imported oil will get new taxes, too. But not to support increased domestic production. Look forward to higher prices at the pump.
The Washington Post, though, is leading the cheers, with this incredible headline:
Democrats’ $80 billion wager: A bigger IRS will be a better IRS
What?
It gets worse when you read further:
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig wrote to lawmakers on Thursday that his agency was committed to upping enforcement “in areas of challenge for the agency — large corporate and global high-net-worth taxpayers.” He added, “These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.”
Oh, what piffle. There's not a word in that bill about who can get targeted -- the IRS, money in hand. can target any taxpayer they like, quite unlike the Department of Homeland Security which "prioritizes" only certain illegal aliens for enforcement action and not others. The Post notes that Biden is going to get rid of Rettig, a Trump appointee, soon, and appoint a leftist. This will be a guy who will lie like Alejandro Mayorkas, or else go naked in his advocacy of an IRS enforcer behind every small business.
The IRS makes most of its money going after small business owners who don't have the money to defend themselves with lawyers and specially carved out loopholes -- it gets a $10 per $1 spent return according to the Post.
The result is that the IRS’s prolific enforcement capabilities — which bring in on average better than $10 in revenue for every $1 spent pursuing audits — are often trained on the most economically vulnerable taxpayers.
More than half of the agency’s audits in 2021 were directed at taxpayers with incomes less than $75,000, according to IRS data.
Those little guys, by the way, according to one chart (coming soon) disproportionately target Latino taxpayers in the Southwest, places like the Texas borderlands corridors and southern Arizona, while completely ignoring the northeast as if nobody would dream of cheating on taxes in some place like New York.
Understand why those places are suddenly turning bright red? Understand why Sinema and all the other Democrat cavers in that region are beyond stupid, targeting their own voters?
Meanwhile, the IRS expects to claw back less than half of that from its newly targeted wealthier taxpayers.
The Post reports the IRS expects a much lower return on all those "rich" people they claim they are going to audit with those 87,000 new agents, which is an eightfold increase in their budget, with $4.50 gained for all those federal dollars "invested." That's way less than the $10 per $1 they are making now with the little guy taxpayers. Yet still, somehow, we are supposed to believe that once they have the congressionally appropriated money, that they will only target "the rich."
With 87,000 newly minted agents, and all of them under pressure from their bosses to "produce" for the government, who are they going to go for? Where is the money at, as a famous bank robber once put it? When you're shooting fish in a barrel, and the target can't fight back, and you have all the power to dictate who's a bad guy and show their new bosses how wonderful they are at bringing home the bacon, who are the newly minted IRS agent going to target? The Wall Street Journal's persuasive editorial titled "The IRS is About to Go Beast Mode" pretty well tells us what's in store with this horrendous bill.
Democrats, though, are still touting it, and likely for the most cynical of reasons.
They know they are going to be thrown out of office come November. They also know that the GOP is spineless and they expect it to be spineless by not repealing this bill the minute it gets a chance to. The GOP, like they themselves, are as addicted to government spending as the Democrats are. So the bill will stay in place. Meanwhile, the bill will trash the economy, raise gas prices, raise inflation, and sic hordes of IRS agents onto small businesses and other low income taxpayers who can't fight back. As the nightmare filters through society and things get worse and worse, who will voters then blame for it? The GOP, of course. Gee, things have gotten so much worse than they were even under the Democrats!
Democrats know how these stink bombs work. They've sent out a new one for the GOP to claim ownership of and are betting that the GOP will fall for it. They've got it baked in the cake.
Monica Showalter
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/democrats_new_campaign_slogan_a_bigger_irs_is_a_better_irs.html
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