The GOP's first bill exposes the lie of right-wing populism [View all]
After a bruising battle over the speakership, House Republicans kicked off their legislative agenda on Monday. It was a farce.
The GOP’s first policy bill would defund President Joe Biden’s efforts to help the Internal Revenue Service crack down on tax cheats. It’s a bill that’s predicated on disinformation, whose only real constituency is wealthy people who don’t want to pay their fair share. And it underscores how the Republican Party’s so-called populism isn’t about empowering the working class — it’s about exploiting them.
After a historic struggle to become House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy immediately tried to rally the troops on Saturday by promising to “repeal funding for 87,000 new IRS agents, because the government should be here to help you, not go after you.” It was classic red meat for the base: For months, Republicans have messaged that the new agents would be recruited into a heavily armed “shadow army” designed to weaponize the IRS against the middle class. Conservative activists and media, which have frequently and wrongly accused the IRS of bias against the right, enthusiastically encouraged these claims.
This narrative is a work of fiction. In reality, the funding is going toward an understaffed federal agency in desperate need of personnel to perform its basic functions. The IRS’s staff size today is the same as in 1970, and there are a lot more tax returns to deal with today. The 87,000 figure refers to the total number of employees that would be hired by the Treasury Department, and a majority will not be agents involved with enforcement. According to the Treasury, just 1 percent of new employees would be agents assigned to details that require carrying firearms.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-gop-s-first-bill-exposes-the-lie-of-right-wing-populism/ar-AA16cZMK
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