The House has voted to claw back funding for the IRS in its first legislative move since the new GOP majority was sworn into office.
The bill passed 221-210. Recently chosen House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had vowed to make cutting IRS funding provided by the Democratic-backed Inflation Reduction Act a top priority in the new Congress.
THE GOP ARMS ITSELF FOR A NEW WAR ON THE IRS
The Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act was introduced by Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) and guts most of the $80 billion in IRS funding allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act.
A major Republican criticism of the funding is that it would, in part, be used to boost tax enforcement. The GOP has warned that a supercharged IRS could be weaponized against middle-class workers in order to exact revenue for the federal government and ran on the issue during this past year’s midterm elections.
“The last thing the American people need right now are more audits from an out-of-control, bloated IRS. The Inflation Act funding for IRS would lead to the hiring of 87,000 new IRS employees tasked with raising enough revenue to pay for Democrats’ Green New Deal priorities,” Smith said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.
Democrats have pushed back on Republican claims about the IRS funding, noting that the 87,000 new employees would not all be auditors and would include thousands of workers in other roles. Additionally, the IRS expects a large number of its employees to retire over the next five years.
The Republican plan to claw back the IRS funding doesn’t completely eliminate it. The bill leaves in place funding for customer service and information technology improvements because the “IRS is in desperate need of reform,” according to Smith, who said the legislation is meant to allay concerns about the IRS auditing the middle class.
Earlier in the day, the Congressional Budget Office scored the bill and estimated that it would cut spending by more than $71 billion and reduce tax revenue by about $186 billion over the next decade, resulting in a net addition to deficits of $114.4 billion.
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McCarthy was handed over the speaker’s gavel in the early morning hours of Saturday, ending a multiday saga that featured holdout Republicans seeking a bevy of concessions in return for their vote.
Alongside combating the IRS, the new Republican leadership intends to conduct aggressive oversight of the Biden administration and pass legislation to deal with the border crisis.
