Democrats have been called out by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over the details of a reconciliation bill that is slated to add 87,000 more agents to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Cruz highlighted his thoughts via remarks during a Senate floor speech this past weekend that highlighted that Americans are not looking for IRS agents to deal with the problems plaguing this country.
“There are a lot of bad things in this bill, but few are worse than the proposal by Democrats in this bill to double the size of the IRS and create 87,000 new IRS agents,” stated Cruze as part of his speech on the Senate floor.
“I guarantee you citizens in every one of our states, if you ask them, ‘What do they want?’ they don’t want 87,000 new IRS agents. And they’re not being created to audit billionaires or giant corporations. They’re being created to audit you,” he stated.
Cruz also issued concerns about the total number of estimated new audits that could and will take place as a result of this new piece of legislation.
“The House Ways and Means Committee, the minority has put out an estimate that under this bill there will be 1.2 million new audits per year with over 700,000 of those new audits falling on taxpayers making $75,000 or less,” explained the senator.
As part of a social media post that was shared by the senator, which included a video of his speech, Cruz highlighted the insane size of the proposed expanded IRS when looking in comparison to the other areas of the federal government.
“Democrats want to make the IRS larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined,” stated Cruz. “That’s a terrible idea. We should abolish the IRS!”
Democrats want to make the IRS larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined.
That's a terrible idea. We should abolish the IRS! pic.twitter.com/DtI8SSIHmO
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) August 7, 2022
As part of another social media post put out on Sunday, Cruz labeled the bill as “big government run amok.”
“My amendment would have struck the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” he explained. “But Democrats want to target the American people and their small businesses will more audits. These agents aren’t going to go after billionaires.”
To go along with the concerns in relation to the expansion of the IRS, Cruz called out a push by Democrats seeking to punish unvaccinated school children in Washington, D.C., from taking part in person.
“Enough is enough. COVID-19 learning loss has been devastating,” explained Cruz. “But DC Democrats don’t care. They want to punish unvaccinated schoolkids, primarily minorities, from attending school in person.”
In the same vein, Cruz made the argument that if Democrats were to vote in favor of the new law, it will disproportionately punish thousands of students in publish schools who would not be eligible to attend. He spoke about research that said that 85% of 12-15-year-old students in D.C. were vaccinated, but just 60% of African Americans students have received a COVID vaccination.
“We should not be denying children education because D.C. Democrats want to force them to get a COVID vaccine against their wishes or their parents’ wishes,” he finished.