The IRS funding vote
There have been are a lot of things happening in the House recently – so many that I missed this on Monday, the day it occurred. Of course, it won’t be passed by the Senate, and even if it were passed Biden would veto it:
The House voted to repeal billions of dollars of Internal Revenue Service funding that Democrats approved last year, an issue that is likely to crop up repeatedly this year.
In the first vote on legislation with Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the helm, the chamber passed a bill on Monday night that would rescind most of the $80 billion President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act approved to bolster the agency’s faltering audit program. The legislation passed 221-210 on a party-line vote.
So what? Well, it’s another promise kept, for starters. Most of the rest of the article is little more than propaganda and spin of the mean old nasty Republicans pounce variety. But this is why the passage of this bill might matter, at least a little:
The new majority is going to bring “accountability on spending in every federal agency,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said on Tuesday. “If there’s waste fraud and abuse in any federal agency it’s got to be rooted out…and it started with the IRS bill last night.”
As part of a deal to win over members of his caucus to secure his new position, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has agreed to only bring up fiscal 2024 spending bills that could cut non-defense agency funding by more than 20%. Scalise confirmed Republicans will also use the upcoming need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling as leverage to bring about spending cuts.
“We have to sit down and say, ‘Why are we hitting the limit?’” the majority leader said. “Before we hit that limit, shouldn’t we have an honest conversation about how to start living within our means?” He added Republicans would push to “put mechanisms in place” to “control the spending problem.”
Republicans left the door open to providing some resources for IRS to boost customer service…
So far, things seem to be proceeding as well as could be hoped, considering the thinness of the GOP majority. It’s instructive to remember that even had the Republicans won the Senate as well, without a veto-proof GOP majority Biden would have successfully vetoed just about every bill they might have passed.
So, given that none of these bills and any subsequent bills likely to be passed solely by House Republicans have much of a chance of becoming law, perhaps the best way to look at these bills is to view them as outlining a Republican agenda, one that can continually be referred to and compared to that of the Democrats; a set of actions/proposals which can be pointed to as a preview of things/policies Republicans intend to enact into law, if Republican voters turn out (and if Democrat vote fraud can be largely eliminated), Republicans can keep control of the House, gain the Senate and, hopefully, the Presidency in 2024.
Biden vetoing budgets would cause a shutdown, if the House held the line and the Senate didn’t lard it with poison pills and pork, and I think the media would have a very tough time spinning it as though it were not his doing.
In the last decade vetoes have become quite rare, partly because with thin majorities it’s much easier to pick off individual Senators and Congressmen. In the Senate for example, you only have 2 or 3 you have to lean on. If you want it “vetoed” without vetoing it and the Left wants it, promise something to Sinema and get her to fall off. If you want it “vetoed” without vetoing it and the Right wants it, you have a dozen options but Graham or Romney shouldn’t be too hard to get on board.
@Snow on Pine:perhaps the best way to look at these bills is to view them as outlining a Republican agenda
It’s a good start, but I think we have every right to expect more. We need the GOP in the House to shut down everything bad coming from the Senate.
If nothing got in the budgets other than items that both the Senate and the House GOP wanted, and if the House GOP is not acting as the right wing of the Uniparty, then it would be a very good two years for people who vote Republican.
I predict we will not see anything that good. I predict stuff will come through from the Senate that the House GOP will allow through and claim their majority isn’t big enough and try to dodge accountability with GOP voters. The media will do their best to support this spin.
I predict Uniparty. Otay.
Trying to use the debt limit as a negotiating tool is a sucker’s bet. It makes about as much sense as threatening to set yourself on fire if you don’t get what you want. Conservatives need to stop looking for silver bullets and just do the boring, ugly job of legislating.
“In the last decade vetoes have become quite rare”
Another of the reasons for that has been the use of the filibuster threat in the Senate to stop bills even when the President has pledged to veto them. It’s another sign of the deep dysfunction in our political culture.
Mike
The IRS certainly needs more customer service people. My CPA has found it almost impossible to reach them, even with multiple calls.
At best they’re only going to be able shine a light on the ”waste fraud and abuse”, but even that is worth doing.
They’d have ample staff if the tax code were not unnecessarily complex.
Speaking of agency funding, what about a drastic cut in the FBI’s budget?
Example: save money by moving FBI’s main office to Frostbite Falls, Minnesota…..and require staffers to live within 30 miles of Frostbite Falls HQ.
What the hell’s wrong with Nome, Alaska?
They should eliminate entire agencies/departments, starting with Education.
Mike Plaiss
What the hell’s wrong with Nome, Alaska?
In support of relocation of federal government bureaucrats: make Nome their home. And in support of Green Energy initiatives, require them to have their Nome offices and residences heated by solar electricity. 🙂
Frederick and T-Rex have the right of it. The latter is not going to happen and the former, for the House to hold the line… is highly unlikely.
An unwillingness to ruthlessly use the House’s budgetary powers is tantamount to surrender to the democrats. It’s not enough to simply act as an obstruction to the democrat’s agenda for the next two years because it will give the democrats the bludgeon of ‘mule headed republican intransigence’. House republicans must offer proposed solutions and let the democrats reject them.
Wow Geingo – that’s good!
Unfortunately, as we know, the tax code is never going to make sense.
I used to say that there were too many Lawyer and Accounting rice bowls to be preserved. Now, there is another, equally powerful, factor; “the disparate impact on minorities”. IAW, a commonsense tax code would be, all together now, RACIST. Of course, the handouts and set asides in the current mess are eclipsed by the loopholes available to the rich and powerful. But, that gets lost in the noise.
My favorite response to most current governmental/societal actions is Galatians 6:7. We have sown for a long time, and we will reap the poison fruits for a very long time.
Damn autocorrect.
Its all wrap up in the omnibus bill but its a batsignal toward sanity
I understand the politics (really, optics) of the 87000 additional IRS agents approved by the Democrats, but I think the Republicans could have used them to, e.g., audit every PPP loan and other federal programs. A missed opportunity. Of course, Republican voters received PPP loans, so perhaps it’s politics all the way down.
@Ben Jacobs:the 87000 additional IRS agents approved by the Democrats, but I think the Republicans could have used them to, e.g., audit every PPP loan
You can’t. There aren’t 87,000 people with the needed qualifications to hire out there, and there never were, and it’s only funded over 10 years anyway so you couldn’t hire them in one year.
What David Foster said about about more customer service people, that’s the kind of employee always intended to be the bulk of the 87,000.
Oh, so that’s why they’re taking weapons training….
Service with a smile (and a revolver)!
On the tax code not making any sense, years ago I watched a program about the Gallo’s (the wine makers) inheritance tax problems. They up spending about 2 million on lobbyists and ‘donations’ to various congressmen and senators. The result was a one line in a bill that absolved the Gallos from paying the inheritance tax, which would have been 20 million. Could that have been easier to hide in a less complicated tax code? Lot of shenanigans in the details.
@Barry:that’s why they’re taking weapons training….
What, the whole 87,000? LOL. I know the IRS has armed agents. I know the IRS trains their armed agents. But they’re a tiny fraction of the total.
You know how the Left will take a law that forbids teaching third-graders and younger about sex inappropriately, slap the label “Don’t Say Gay” on it, and then tries to scare us with high-school teachers being fired if they mention they have a same-sex partner? The Right plays that game too, and that’s what “87,000 armed auditors” is.
I’m pretty sure the IRS can and should get along without 8,700 new hires per year over ten years. I’m also pretty sure that they won’t all be armed and trained to kick in doors, and they sure won’t all be auditors. Government has plenty of people to kick in your door now, the IRS just has to make a phone call.
The IRS is hiring–over the next ten years. There is funding for 87,000 of these hires–over the next ten years. At least one of those hires will probably be trained and armed. At least one of them will be an auditor. Those things are true. It does not follow from these true things that all 87,000 of them will be armed and/or auditors.
If the 87,000 number is intended to include a lot of customer service people, it certainly hasn’t been presented that way. Biden & co have had plenty of opportunities to make that point, but instead they have focused entirely on claims about going after Bad Rich People.
@David Foster: it certainly hasn’t been presented that way.
LOL, not by the people opposing it, no. Do you need a hundred articles saying that it’s a lie? A quick Internet search will show you that.
Of course, a hundred articles saying a GOP talking point is false MUST imply that it’s really true and the media is trying to cover it up. Because we we use heuristics now, not evidence. We listen to what people say just long enough to figure out what team they might be on and use that to decide how to interpret what they say and whether we believe it.
instead they have focused entirely on claims about going after Bad Rich People.
A lie from the Left does not make a lie from the Right true.
Cite some numbers Frederick. Your “I knows” are just chaff from a cynic.
As I understand it, the primary weapon the House has to enforce it’s will is “the power of the purse,” it just has to have the guts to use it’s power over government budgets and expenditures.
Thus, if every Department, Agency, and lesser federal organization whose witnesses don’t show, or who show but have a contemptuous attitude, or who have a complete loss of memory were given an immediate and major cut in it’s budget, the number of FTEs it could employ, or even have some of it’s cherished components immediately defunded, I’d bet that these behaviors and attitudes would soon die out.
Snow on Pine:
The GOP-controlled House can pass a bill defunding something, but if the Democrat-controlled Senate doesn’t agree, then the GOP House’s refusal would be likely to end up as a stalemated government shutdown, which usually seems to cause backlash against the GOP. That’s long been the dilemma, at least as I understand it.
They should eliminate entire agencies/departments, starting with Education.
I think in re Education, you transfer the statistical collection function to the Labor Department, incorporate an appendage to the Federal Trade Commission to regulate vendor-to-vendor and vendor-to-consumer relations in higher education, incorporate a resolutions authority to phase out the student loan programs and liquidate the government’s portfolio, and just shut the rest of the department down outright.
With HUD, you transfer the office regulating lead paint to the EPA and shut the rest of the department down.
Another target would be components of the USDA. That would include the Food and Nutrition Service first and foremost, the entire rural development apparat, the Farm Service Agency. You could sell of the loan portfolios and insurance policies as well. Also, the ‘National Institute on Food and Agriculture’, which is a grant money vent pipe.
At HHS, targets would be the Substances Abuse & c. Administration, the Health Resources &c. Administration, the Administration on Aging, and the various components of the Administration on Children and Families bar the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Office of Child Support Enforcement. You could also discontinue the grant money machine of all components of the department.
In re the Department of Transportation, you might retain grants to maintain the long-haul interstates as well as distribution of signage for short-haul Interstates and U.S. Routes. Otherwise, shut all the grant programs down.
As a partial replacement for TANF and for subsidies to mundane expenditure (e.g. food, housing, and utility bills), you could amend and elaborate on the Earned Income Tax Credit. Another countervaling act would be a schedule of protective tariffs to counteract the subsidies foreign countries provide their farmers.
And the usual suspects: the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Inter-American Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the telecom subsidies in the Federal Communications Commission budget, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Small Business Administration, the Farm Credit Administration (selling off its loan portfolios), the Export-Import Bank (which Bitc* McConnell went out of his way to save), the half dozen scholarship funds named for members of Congress, the Institute for Museum and Library Services (more grant money). Putting AmTrak on the auction bloc would be another idea.
@ Neo > “The GOP-controlled House can pass a bill defunding something, but if the Democrat-controlled Senate doesn’t agree, then the GOP House’s refusal would be likely to end up as a stalemated government shutdown, which usually seems to cause backlash against the GOP. That’s long been the dilemma, at least as I understand it.”
One reason the conservative base is angry — the GOP wasted their too-few years with both chambers and the presidency NOT doing many of the important things they claimed to champion when they didn’t have the power to do them.
The backlash is all media theater as well – the public isn’t driving it.
Obama spent additional money to “shut down” parks and monuments that cost the government nothing to leave open.
Art Deco on January 13, 2023 at 3:46 pm said:
They should eliminate entire agencies/departments, starting with Education.
A long list of excellent ideas, as usual.
I often wonder what your day job is/was, because you’ve obviously put a lot of thought into constructing a reformed government structure, based on many of your past comments.