AMAC Exclusive – By Tammy Bruce
If you thought destroying our energy independence, causing the worst inflation in 40 years, destabilizing the economy in general, and destroying our supply chain would be enough to satisfy the Democrats, think again. Since crushing the security, optimism, and financial freedom of Americans wasn’t enough, they’ve now decided to turn the screw even more by raising taxes and lying to our faces about it. For the left, this is the cherry on top of the Democrats’ Drop-Dead America sundae, also known as the “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022.
You will not be surprised to learn – just like how inflation wasn’t transitory, how the border is not closed, how the Taliban won’t take over Kabul for at least two years, and how al-Qaeda is gone from Afghanistan – that despite the laughable title, the bill will, in fact, increase inflation. Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) reports, “The Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) released its preliminary estimates of the budgetary and macroeconomic effects of Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spending spree… The Model, an initiative of the University of Pennsylvania, found that Democrat’s misnamed ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ would actually increase inflation for the next two years.”
One of the most revealing aspects of this bill is that it expands and further weaponizes the IRS against middle-class Americans and those on the economic margins of society. The 80 billion dollar bill will allow the hiring of 87,000 new IRS investigative agents. As Grover Norquist, the president of ATR notes, this is more than all the servicemen and women who serve on our aircraft carriers around the world. That’s also 87,000 new members for the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), a union which, according to ATR, “dedicates 97 percent of its political spending to Democrats.”
The Wall Street Journal pulled no punches with their condemnation of the bill’s true impact:
“The $80 billion is more than six times the current annual IRS budget of $12.6 billion. The money will be ladled out over nine years and comes with few strings attached. The main Democratic command is for the tax agency to bring the hammer down on taxpayers. The bill earmarks $45.6 billion for ‘enforcement,’ including ‘litigation,’ ‘criminal investigations,’ ‘investigative technology,’ ‘digital asset monitoring’ and a new fleet of tax-collector cars. The result will be far more audits, civil suits, and criminal referrals.”
This monstrosity is a Hail Mary pass to continue the leftist “painful transition” as Biden calls it, consisting of the disastrous Green New Deal (including new direct hits on natural gas production), extending ObamaCare subsidies, while massively increasing the IRS and implementing back-door taxes on Americans as we fall further into recession.
Fox Business reports, “The Inflation Reduction Act — unveiled Wednesday by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and endorsed by Biden — would increase tax revenue by $16.7 billion from Americans earning less than $200,000 a year, according to nonpartisan analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT)… Nearly every tax bracket would pay more in taxes with those making below $10,000 per year seeing the largest uptick, the analysis showed.”
Moreover, the US Government Accountability Office confirms, “From fiscal years 2010 to 2021, the majority of the additional taxes IRS recommended from audits came from taxpayers with incomes below $200,000,” and “Audits of the lowest-income taxpayers, particularly those claiming the EITC, resulted in higher amounts of recommended additional tax per audit hour compared to all income groups except for the highest-income taxpayers. IRS officials explained that EITC audits are primarily pre-refund audits and are conducted through correspondence, requiring less time.”
And why is that? Because a letter from the IRS demanding more money is rather intimidating and when you don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to defend yourself many feel they have no other option but to find a way to squeeze more blood out of that bank account rock, or your brother-in-law, or a credit card. Voila! A quick resolution.
And here we have, like ghouls, the IRS crowing about how letter audits have the best dollar return for the least amount of time spent. If this bill passes, get ready for more of that. During a recession with massive inflation, even fewer Americans will be able to afford the time and legal services to defend themselves properly against the government.
Somehow, I think the Democrats know that. And yet Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) keeps insisting there are no taxes in this bill. He knows that’s just semantics. He knows you will be paying more money to the IRS, it just won’t be through an official tax. Instead, it’ll be an IRS agent demanding it from you in a letter or with a knock on your door.
Shame on him for helping to facilitate such a fraud.
If Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) has his way, it will also include a new expansion of Medicare as a vehicle with which to slow-walk all of us into Single Payer Healthcare, also known as Nationalized Healthcare.
So if you loved what happened during COVID, nationalized healthcare offers up that catastrophe on steroids. The only question left will be how many more of our seniors can politicians send to their deaths in nursing homes? Because after all, health insurance is not about access to healthcare, it’s about bureaucrats deciding who will not be granted access.
Whether this bill passes or not, it is a stark reminder of what the Democrats are capable of as we continue to suffer under their already disastrous policies. This Schumer-Manchin bill is a shill for a massive government expansion and the destruction of your financial independence. After all the damage politicians have inflicted on our lives during the past 18 months, they have stepped up to enforce the final indignity—they want to make us all wards of the state. This cannot continue and will not if we make sure our voices are heard.