Townhall Review | Commentaries

A new bill funding 87,000 new IRS agents has passed the Senate. 

Afterward, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland insisted Americans have no reason to be concerned as long as they pay their taxes.

Nonsense. A Syracuse University study found the IRS is five times as likely to audit households earning less than $25,000 per year. What’s more, the process itself is the punishment.

Audits are stressful. They’re time consuming. And all too often, the IRS claims a citizen owes money. Whether or not the agency’s correct, it’s frequently cheaper and easier just to pay up than to prolong the agony by appealing.

When working class and low-income Americans are already suffering, Democrats passed a bill – not to help them – but to enrich government. And sic an army of tax collectors on them. How revealing.

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As we continue to watch the story develop on the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-lago home, the story thus far fits squarely with the intuitions of so many on the right: 

Most Republicans rightly believe that Trump has been unfairly targeted by civil servants motivated by partisanship going back years, long before his stunning election in 2016 and certainly thereafter. The “Steele dossier,” charges Russia collusion, allegations of obstruction of justice—they all helped create an automatic suspicion on the right of this latest search.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham captured the gravity of our current moment on my program early last week: “We are a nation of laws, nobody’s above the law, that’s for darn sure. But the politics around getting Trump have been going on so long and so often that we’re talking about constitutional principles here. This is a dangerous moment for the American Constitution. We’ll see how this plays out.”

Yes: We’ll see how it plays out. 

And yes: It is “a dangerous moment for the American Constitution.”

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President Biden and the Congressional Democrats are well underway to passing what they’ve labeled the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

It should be named “The IRS Expansion Act”—because they have effectively doubled the size of the IRS with this bill, granting the agency some 87,000 new personnel—most of them will be agents.  

And: They’ve spent $3.5 trillion total over two years, $3.5 trillion that was not needed because Covid had been recovered from in the economy—that had been taken care of in a bipartisan fashion by the last two congresses, under last two budgets under President Trump. Still the Democrats spent $1.9 trillion on the American Recovery Act that was unnecessary. They spent $550 billion in infrastructure, $280 billion on the CHIPS Act, and—with this new bill, they’re on their way to spending another $700 billion. 

The name “Inflation Reduction Act” is Orwellian. It will only increase your inflation—while doubling the number of IRS agents looking into all of our finances—every business, every individual.

Don’t be fooled.

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The new so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” passed the Senate without a single Republican vote. And for good reason. Among other destructive provisions, the $740 billion dollar bill funds 87,000 new IRS agents.

Not coincidentally, this sends a chill of fear through the heart of everyone leading a right-leaning nonprofit in America. We all remember Lois Lerner, the IRS director who authorized the targeting of conservative organizations during the Obama administration. She retired with her full pension. In other words, they got away with it!

The Biden administration has already sicced the FBI on parents who protested at school board meetings. So obviously it’s plenty willing to use the instrumentalities of government to play politics.

And now it has a whole new army of IRS agents to help it do so. Strap in, America. It’s going to get ugly.

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On Monday, the FBI and Department of Justice took an unprecedented action in conducting a search on a former president’s residence. Donald Trump has been in an ongoing dispute with the National Archives over his compliance with the Presidential Records Act. That dispute led to allegations of mishandling classified material, which reportedly prompted the warrant and the raid. 

This raises new concerns over politicization at the Department of Justice. Under Attorney General Merrick Garland’s leadership, the handling of school-board protests and non-enforcement of federal law regarding the intimidation campaigns targeting Supreme Court justices had already raised those questions.

No one is above the law, and a federal magistrate approved the search warrant. But Merrick Garland must publicly explain the decision to raid Mar-a-Lago rather than just subpoena the documents sought. That explanation had better justify the historical norm destroyed in this raid, or it will stand as yet more evidence of politicization in Joe Biden’s Department of Justice. 
It doesn’t look good.

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“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.” Or so suggested Winston Churchill.
 
Human rights really should not be up for vote, especially the right to life. But in America today we need to pass laws protecting the unborn.
 
A few weeks ago, we saw a bad democratic result in Kansas, where citizens voted to retain a state court ruling creating a right to abortion.
 
This past week, we saw a good result in Indiana, where the governor signed into law legislation that will shut down all abortion clinics in that state, and likely lead to a 95 percent reduction in elective abortions.
 
As Alexandra DeSanctis and I explain in our new book, “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing,” now is the time to be persuading our neighbors about the injustice of abortion, and the right to life for all people—born and unborn.
 

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Chuck Schumer finally got his wish. After reaching a deal with Joe Manchin on a far smaller version of Build Back Better and calling it the Inflation Reduction Act, Kyrsten Sinema objected to its tax increases. Despite some hope that the Arizona Democrat might force economic reality on her colleagues, Sinema agreed to support it after winning some modest changes—and a $5 billion pork chop for Arizona on drought relief.

Schumer wants to sell this as Democrats’ answer to inflation. However, a Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis shows that this bill will actually increase inflation slightly for the first year, and will have little impact on inflation afterward. Even its supposed deficit reduction impact won’t be felt until several years after its adoption.

Schumer hasn’t fooled anyone except Manchin and Sinema. As a YouGov poll showed, only 12 percent of Americans think this will reduce inflation—and only 21 percent of Democrats believe him. In other words, the Inflation Reduction Act is a fraud -- just a skinnier version of the same old tax-and-spend policies that got us into our current economic mess.

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This past Tuesday’s primaries has pretty well set the field for the races to control the 50-50 Senate.

Here are the races that matter:

• Blake Masters in Arizona. He can win.
• Joe O’Dea in Colorado, same thing, in fact for all of them.
• Herschel Walker in Georgia.
• In North Carolina, Congressman Budd is going to be Senator
• Up in New Hampshire, I’m pretty sure Chuck Morse is going to be the nominee and he can win.
• Adam Laxalt can take that seat back in Nevada.
• Watch J.D. Vance in my home state of Ohio.
• Oz—proving himself to be a great candidate in Pennsylvania.
• Tiffany Smiley in Washington State is turning people’s heads.
• And then we have Ron Johnson, of course, in Wisconsin.

Ten races. If the Republicans run the board, they have a six-seat majority, 56 seats in the Senate.

Winning in November is the most important way to put the brakes on the profligate spending and the radical agenda that has put us where we are today.

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At the recent meeting Aspen Security Forum, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insisted America’s southern border is “secure.”

A member of the Border Patrol condemned Mayorkas for telling “boldfaced lies” —and rightly so—pointing out that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants cross our border every month. Thousands elude border agents every day.

Sadly, telling falsehoods for the camera isn’t unknown among the political set. But what’s breathtaking here is its brazenness. Mayorkas’ claim runs so counter to what’s evidently, obviously, provably evident to anyone with eyes that his lying signals utter contempt for the people he’s supposed to be serving.

Does he believe we’re too stupid to see the truth? or does he think he—and those like him—are simply so powerful we can do nothing about it but fume in humiliated impotence?

Either way, it’s behavior very unbecoming a so-called “public servant.”

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Will she or won’t she? After Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer finally cut a deal on reconciliation, all eyes have turned to Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who had also resisted the earlier and massive tax-and-spend Build Back Better proposals. Senator Manchin pushed hard for Sinema to back the new agreement on several Sunday talk shows, claiming that it didn’t raise taxes and would address their shared concerns on inflation and deficits.

None of that turns out to be true. A Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis shows that the bill will actually increase inflation slightly into 2024. Deficit reduction won’t happen until 2027, and then only if future Congresses don’t change its trajectory. 

The bill raises $327 billion in new taxes that hits manufacturers and other producers particularly hard. It also disincentives investments that could increase output and innovation—a stunning approach in a supply-shock inflationary environment.

Sinema should stick to her principles and reject this bill. And her constituents need to make sure she knows it. 

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