Press Releases
Smith: “The IRS does not need a raise; It needs a reckoning.”WASHINGTON – Today, Ways and Means Chairman-elect Jason Smith (MO-08) delivered remarks during debate on the House Floor on legislation authored by House Republicans to cancel the $80 billion pay raise Washington Democrats gave the IRS in their Inflation Reduction Act – funds passed under one-party Democrat rule last year to supercharge the IRS to hire 87,000 new agents to target and increase audits on working families and small businesses. In his remarks, Smith made the case for why the IRS needs more oversight, not more funding: “This bill rescinds the IRS funds in the Inflation Reduction Act – a law that does nothing to combat inflation but everything to empower an agency that has targeted Americans, leaked taxpayer information, and, under the Biden Administration, threatened to snoop into the bank accounts of millions of middle-class families. “We know this because President Biden wrote such a proposal into his first budget as part of his agenda to expand the power of the IRS and shovel billions more to this troubled agency. “At that time, we asked the Joint Committee on Taxation how many Americans might be subject to such a scheme to spy into their bank accounts. The JCT said up to 134 million taxpayers could be targeted – so much for just going after the millionaires and billionaires that our Democrat colleagues like to talk about. “And while the Biden Administration – including Treasury Secretary Yellen – has tried to dismiss concerns over how middle-class Americans would be targeted by the IRS under the Democrats’ $80 billion infusion of cash, the Congressional Budget Office has affirmed that undoubtedly families making less than $400,000 per year would be subjected to increased enforcement and yes audits by the IRS… “The IRS does not need a raise; it needs a reckoning. And what starts today with rescinding this $80 billion, continues through rigorous IRS oversight that Democrats ignored under the one-party rule.”
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