In today’s Washington Post Columnist Dana Milbank discombobulates the GOP campaign season lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats are hiring “87,000 armed IRA Agents” presumedly to rape and pillage the returns of American middle class tax-payers.
You’ll be shocked to learn that is all bullshit:
“Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent an open letter last week warning Americans not to work for the IRS. He falsely claimed that the Democrats’ climate, energy and tax bill would add “roughly 87,000 agents” at the IRS, creating “an IRS super-police force”.
“The IRS made it very clear that one of the ‘major duties’ of these new positions is to ‘be willing to use deadly force.’ … The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to kill them.”
Well, that certainly sounds ominous… and smells of cow pie.
What’s the deal, Dana?
“The IRS certainly isn’t adding 87,000 armed agents. It isn’t even adding 87,000 agents. In fact, it’s not even adding 87,000 employees.
When you figure in attrition (current funding doesn’t let the IRS fill all vacancies), Treasury officials tell me, the expected increase in personnel would be more like 40,000, over the course of a decade — which would merely restore IRS staffing to around the 117,000 it had in 1990.
Only about 6,500 of the new hires would be “agents.” The rest would be customer-service representatives, data specialists and the like.“
So rabid IRS agents are not going to be stalking average Americans awhile toting ARs and grenade launchers?
But these Republicans swore that that is what will happen:
Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) – “we WILL NOT FUND these 87k armed new IRS agents who will target the American people.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) – “a strike force that goes in with AK-15s [sic] already loaded ready to shoot some small-business person.”
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) – “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel – “IRS ‘SWAT team’ ” invading “your kids’ lemonade stand.”
Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade – IRS will “hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers that don’t pay enough.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) – “87,000 new agents, AR-15s and 5 million rounds of ammunition.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) – “ 87,000 new IRS agents.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – “middle finger to the American public.”
You mean all these fine Republicans lied, Dana?
Color me not shocked.
So many lies, all intended to keep the Q’s and R’s angry and afraid. They should be afraid of what will come if they don’t wise up.
Of all the lies, distortions and misrepresetations fomented by right wing poiticians and their media cohorts like Hannity and Levin, this may be the most destructive and downright wrong. First of all, only a few thousand, at most, would be criminal investigators, armed and authorized, as they go after real criminals who in many cases are themselves armed. The vast majority would be auditors who would now have the opportunity to go after that vast populace of cash businesses who are underpaying their taxes to the nth degree. And yes, many of those businesses, like “mom and pops” and free-lancers REPORT less than $75K a year even though they really clear more. It is labor intensive to park an agent in front of a barber shop all day with a clicker and count the patrons, or follow a landscaper around as he cuts grass for a dozen customers or check out neighborhoods to see who is living beyond their means but that’s where the payoff is, not the high end guys who legally avoid (not evade) taxes by using loopholes and smart accountants.
Republicans are no longer simply dishonest. They are bald-faced liars.
Here’s a link to a recent NYT article on the same topic. Good read.
😀
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So, the Republicans are PRO-GUN CONTROL when it comes to FEDERAL employees? That’s funny. They want to arm school teachers to prevent school shootings (despite many schools already having armed security guards and proving highly ineffective at their job; ironically, the “arm the school teachers” movement actually wants them to receive more training than is currently required of the security guards and a zillion times more than is required of regular gun owners) but not IRS agents (who would be more likely to face violent gun-wielding people than most school teachers would ever see).
And weren’t there some of this group wanting to let members of Congress enter the halls fully armed and bypassing metal detectors? Sure. Let’s have Boebert and Greene wandering the halls of Congress with their favorite military-grade guns but we mustn’t let IRS agents facing illegal moonshine makers and tax-dodging mobsters and religious fraud cultists go unarmed. Sounds like what you’d expect of a Republicon.
A MUST READ!
Democrats ‘less inclined to cheat on spouses than Republicans’:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/19/ashley-madison-democrats-less-inclined-cheat-spouses-republicans
Hey. Let’s give the children of the devil a break, ‘gop’ IS shorter than ‘hypocrite’, and the beauty is, it covers the definition of venal hypocrites, AND evil.
Milbank should have been this concerned about lies and lying back when former guy was running in 2015/16. Oh, and all the lies and lying the ‘pubes have been doing for pretty much all of milbank’s career.
Well, considering the way republicans talk nowadays. I would say they are more likely to have rabid, foaming at the mouth IRS agents.