Republicans Quietly Axed IRS Funding Amid Government Shutdown Chaos

Republicans Quietly Axed IRS Funding Amid Government Shutdown Chaos

As Congress fought over the spending bill, Republicans snuck in a passage to gut funding for the IRS. And Democrats didn’t catch it.

Specifically, the White House said, the IRS will conduct 400 fewer major business audits each year, and 1,200 fewer audits of rich individuals. Customer services for taxpayers will also be hurt, according to Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. Last month, he warned that by 2026, the IRS will only have the resources to answer two of every 10 phone calls to its helplines, with wait times increasing to an average of 28 minutes.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s boost to the tax agency helped relieve a long backlog of tax filings, and created a well-liked free tax filing pilot program. All of that is on the chopping block now, fitting in with Donald Trump and Republicans’ plans to weaken the IRS. The president-elect plans to appoint anti-tax extremist Billy Long to take over the agency next year, who repeatedly tried to abolish the IRS as a member of Congress.

These cuts combined with Long’s planned appointment mean that tax season next year will almost certainly result in headaches for the average taxpayer and windfalls for the wealthy and powerful. A ballooning national debt is also on the horizon. The question is whether Trump and the GOP will be able to get away with all of it.


https://newrepublic.com/post/189672/republicans-cut-irs-funding-government-shutdown


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HISTORICAL CONTEXT


**Want A Better Economy? History Says Vote Democrat**

1. Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents

2. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents

3. Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)
Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)

4. Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents

5. The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations

**Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy?**
G.D.P., jobs and other indicators have all risen faster under Democrats for nearly the past century. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opinion/sunday/democrats-economy.html

**U.S. Jobs, Income, GDP Growth 'Startlingly' Higher Under Democratic Presidents** https://www.newsweek.com/us-jobs-income-gdp-growth-startlingly-higher-under-democratic-presidents-analysis-1566313

**Over the last 6 decades--60 years or so, history has tended to favor Democratic presidents in terms of economic performance** https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/10/28/which-presidents-have-been-best-for-the-economy

**During the final 3 years of Barack Obama's presidency 2014. 2015 . 2016 , the number of jobs added was 1.5 million greater than the number added during Trump's first 3 years in office 2017 2018 2019** https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-created-more-jobs-trump

**Trump inherited a booming economy -- and handed Biden a nation 'in shambles'** https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-inherited-booming-economy-handed-biden-nation-shambles-n1255033

**Trump to leave office with the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover** https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-leave-office-worst-jobs-030044152.html

Trump will be first president since WWII to lose jobs during tenure. The U.S. lost 140,000 jobs in December 2020 in the final jobs report of Trump's presidency. This means the nation has about 3 million fewer jobs than it did 4 years ago UNDER THE BLACK GUY --OBAMA, meaning Trump will be the first president to lose jobs over his term since employment data was collected in this way. NBC News Now correspondent Simone Boyce explains how it all unfolded.

https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/trump-will-be-first-president-since-wwii-to-lose-jobs-during-tenure-

DEBT AND DEFICIT

Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It'll Weigh Down the Economy for Years The "King of Debt" promised to reduce the national debt -- then his tax cuts made it surge. Add in the pandemic, and he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president. https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump

The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump's time in office

TRUMP HAD THE THIRD-BIGGEST PRIMARY DEFICIT GROWTH, 5.2% OF GDP, BEHIND ONLY GEORGE W. BUSH (11.7%) AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN (9.4%).--All Republicans

Republican tax cuts are the driving force behind the country's worsening fiscal outlook.

If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions -- as well as the Trump tax cuts -- revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gop-tax-cuts-driving-us-160437971.html

Trump spent $32 billion in 2018 to help ease the burdern his own trade war https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/14/donald-trump-coronavirus-farmer-bailouts-359932

The Trump tax cuts will pay for themselves he said

Trump Tax Cuts Cost $7.8 Trillion, Aid Top Earners, Study Finds Top 1 percent found to receive about 40% of proposals' benefit Plan's revenue raisers seen leaving deficit of $3.5 trillion https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-07-12/trump-tax-cuts-cost-7-8-trillion-aid-top-earners-study-finds?in_sourceembedded-checkout-banner

"Reagan took the deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. Bush 41 took it to $300 billion. Clinton got it to zero. Bush 43 took it from zero to $1.2 trillion. Obama halved it to $600 billion. Trump's got it back to a trillion." https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/29/tweets/republican-presidents-democrats-contribute-deficit/