Last Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Inflation Reduction Act that originated in the U.S. Senate.
Now, President Biden has signed it into law.
The bill – decried by Republicans for spending hundreds of billions in the midst of an inflation crisis and recession – contains $80 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
This represents a more than 600 percent budget boost for the federal agency, which received $12.6 billion in 2021. As has been widely reported, much of this new funding will be used to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees.
This aggressive hiring plan will supersize the IRS. The agency – one of the least popular in the nation, which has struggled to overcome customer service issues and has been accused of targeting individuals and groups based on political affiliations – currently employs less than 79,000 full-time staffers and will more than double in size.
Once 87,000 additional employees are added, it will have more individuals on its payroll than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.
Congressional Democrats have repeatedly claimed that a supersized IRS will exclusively target wealthy “tax cheats” and criminals. But a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has found that most of the new revenue that will be collected as the result of increased IRS audits will come from those making less than $200,000 per year.
This is an unprecedented federal government attack against middle-class Americans. The good news is Republican governors like Brian Kemp and Kim Reynolds are standing up and taking action to provide RELIEF to middle-class families.
