By Brandon Moseley
House Democrats refused to consider Congressman Jerry Carl’s (R-AL01) amendment to H.R. 5376 - The Build Back Better Act.
Carl, who is in his first term representing the First District of Alabama, said his amendment would have prevented the IRS from using billions in new funds for hiring additional armed IRS agents.
Currently, the IRS fields a force of about 2,000 armed agents. Carl claims that the armed component of the IRS has a track record of frequently mishandling and misusing firearms.
House Democrats voted to pass funding for an additional $45 billion for IRS “enforcement,” potentially doubling the number of armed agents that the IRS can put in the field. These agents are often used to pursue citizens who are accused of either evading tax obligations or misreporting their income to the U.S. Treasury in false or erroneous tax filings.
“While Democrats are working around the clock to beef up the IRS and hire tens of thousands of additional agents to snoop on the banking transactions of innocent Americans, I have been fighting to ensure none of this money can be used to hire even more armed IRS agents,” Carl said. “These agents have a horrible track record of misusing and mishandling their firearms, so the last thing we need is to hire more of them. Democrats have rejected my attempts to prevent any further expansion of the IRS’s army of armed agents, but I will continue fighting this horrible abuse of power because it does nothing more than endanger the lives and property of Americans.”
The most recent report on this issue found armed IRS agents have discharged their weapons accidentally more often than they have discharged their weapons intentionally.
The Biden administration defends beefing up the IRS, arguing that the additional IRS agents will bring in an additional $700 billion per year in additional revenue where Americans are not paying what they truly owe to the federal government.
The proposal was part of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is the largest investment in U.S. infrastructure in nearly a century. The bill passed the House of Representatives on Friday by a vote of 228 to 206 and was signed by the President on Saturday.
The IRS was only able to fill 37% of its openings in 2021, so recruiting 60,000 new agents will be a challenge for the organization in the current labor market. Total U.S. federal tax revenue is currently at just $4.049 trillion. Of that $2.008 trillion is individual income tax payments, $361 billion is corporate income tax, $1.312 trillion is payroll taxes, and $69.5 billion is tariffs. (usdebtclock.org).
