“People are paying their fair share — Washington just wants a bigger cut,” Ways and Means member and Republican Leader of the House Committee on Budget Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) writes in a new op-ed for the Washington Examiner, warning that Democrats’ so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” adds $80 billion to target Americans with a supercharged IRS, despite a clear need for greater taxpayer customer service.

Read the full op-ed here.

KEY EXCERPTS:

Democrats are supercharging the IRS, despite a long history of political targeting and leaks.

• “Nine years ago, the Obama-Biden IRS was caught targeting conservative organizations leading up to the 2012 presidential election. People were assured the scandal would be thoroughly investigated, but the IRS was already busy destroying evidence behind closed doors. In total, 422 backup tapes holding 24,000 emails from Lois Lerner, the IRS official in charge of the targeting scheme, were erased.”
• “In the years since then, the IRS has done little to regain the trust of the public. In fact, the agency’s recent actions have only deepened the public’s mistrust of the agency. In August 2021, for example, the private tax information of more than 1,000 wealthy people was leaked coincidentally at the same time the White House was seeking public support for raising taxes on the very same people to finance its spending plans.”

READ: New Schumer-Manchin Bill Will Supercharge Long History of IRS Abuses 

Only 4 percent of new funding is dedicated towards improving taxpayer service.

• “The act essentially empowers the IRS to search under the couch cushions of every living room in America. More than half of the $80 billion allocated to the agency is earmarked for enforcement, like conducting audits, while only 4 percent goes to fixing the agency’s atrocious customer service. Even Obama’s IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has admitted the agency cannot ‘efficiently use that much money.’”

READ: Once Again, Biden Pushes to Supercharge an Increasingly Politicized IRS 

Lower- and middle- income Americans are the primary target in Democrats’ proposal to supercharge the IRS with 87,000 new agents.

• “Democrats have repeatedly dismissed Republicans’ concerns about a tyrannical IRS with little to no regard for how the agency’s frequent abuses affect people’s everyday lives. Just last year, House Democrats proposed giving the IRS the power to snoop in every single bank account that had inflows or outflows of at least $10,000 each year. Biden even included this proposal in his budget submission. If this policy had passed, up to 134 million taxpayers would have been targeted by such an invasion of privacy, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.”

Read the full op-ed here.