A couple of days ago I was discussing the collapse of political morality occurs when a political party would rather defeat the legitimate aims & responsibilities of governing rather than give a rival party a victory. Perhaps it’s petty, or perhaps Senator McConnell is correct in suggesting that a victory for the Democrats endangers the Republicans, but there it is.
And here we have an example. The Des Moines Register wrote an editorial to Senator Grassley (R-IA), imploring him to support the Democratic plan for expanded funding for the Internal Revenue Service:
In fact, leaders like Sen. Chuck Grassley, who say they champion rooting out fraud and abuse, should be leading the charge to ensure tax scofflaws are pursued.
Iowa’s senior senator attended an April Senate Finance Committee hearing with testimony from IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.
He certainly heard Rettig estimate the federal treasury is losing approximately $1 trillion in unpaid taxes each year, more than the annual defense budget. He certainly heard Rettig say that additional mandatory, predictable funding from Congress would “absolutely” help the agency plan, hire workers and catch tax cheats.
Grassley understands a starved agency cannot do its job, whether that job is guarding against fraud on a child tax credit crafted by Democrats or implementing tax cuts crafted by Republicans.
Estimates that an increase in funding of $80 billion would lead to collection of more than $700 billion – a magnitude profit on investment, for those prone to the monetary approach to evaluation.
And, I might add, an IRS unable to conduct appropriate audits, answer questions, or even pick up the phone – the Register estimates the IRS only answers 25% of the calls it receives, and whether those are satisfactory transitions is not at all clear – has more than a monetary impact. Discontent is a powerful force in electoral politics, and while underfunding the IRS may not be visible, or meet with knee-jerk approval, the suspicions that the big corporations are underpaying their obligations, or the wealthy are getting away with ignoring there obligations, leads to an unhappy electorate.
So the Register’s editorial is important.
And Senator Grassley’s response? After citing what are basically Band-Aid responses and irrelevancies, such as claiming that Congress has given the IRS more funding than it requested recently – a response lacking context, such as what happened before 2020, when Trump tried to strangle the IRS – he turns his response into a political attack:
The Biden administration claims more money for enforcement would allow the IRS to collect at least $700 billion. Outside experts have disputed this rosy revenue scenario. Even if this pipe dream is realized, the extra revenue is dwarfed by the Democrats’ $6 trillion spending agenda. And businesses of all sizes would incur new and burdensome compliance costs and reporting requirements along the way. Instead of promising a chicken in every pot, Biden’s plan promises an auditor at every kitchen table.
The IRS also has a trust deficit. During the Obama administration, the IRS was weaponized to target conservative political organizations, and wasted millions in taxpayer dollars on elaborate conferences, and bonuses for IRS employees who failed to pay their own taxes. The IRS also burned through tens of millions of dollars on software that never got off the ground. Americans are right to be wary about further investment in the IRS without significant controls.
It’s hard to know where to begin. This is definitely a scare-mongering response, between kitchen auditors and the fictitious weaponization of the IRS during the Obama Administration. Even if these are true, and at least some of his reasoning relies on studies from Forbes, a reliable right-wing, tax-skeptical media source, increased funding has nothing to do with abuse of the function of the IRS.
The bottom line: An inefficient, underfunded IRS becomes a very leaky boat for the funds it’s supposed to collect and account; those leaks by turns scare and infuriate us, the passengers; and all of this leads to, counter-intuitively, a discontented populace in which it appears the elite, fixated as much of it is on its wealth & position, has passed on fulfilling its responsibilities.
And this isn’t hard stuff to figure out. Grassley should, and probably does, know all this. But he’s in a Party devoted religiously to lower taxes and paranoia of the government. Yes, we could have a happier populace. But Grassley can’t let that happen. It goes against his political/religious tenets.
