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Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, the August inflation numbers came out this week, and they weren't good. Inflation was even higher than expected. It was very clear that soaring prices are likely to continue for quite a while, but as usual, it doesn't seem to concern the Democrats one bit.
The President was asked Tuesday if he was concerned about August's even-worse-than-expected inflation report.
His answer? ``No, I'm not.''
It was just one more tone-deaf moment for the President and the Democrats.
On Tuesday, the President and the Democrats gathered at the White House to congratulate themselves for having passed their so-called Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that will do nothing--nothing--to reduce inflation. That is not just my opinion. That was the conclusion of the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model and of the Democrat chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who referred to the bill as the ``so-called Inflation Reduction Act'' on the Senate floor while admitting it would do nothing to solve our Nation's inflation crisis.
But that didn't stop the Democrats from celebrating yesterday. For most of us, of course, it is difficult to understand what there was to celebrate. Leaving aside the issue of the 40-year-high inflation, we already know that the bill will also fall short in another respect--on deficit reduction.
The Democrats' claims that the bill would provide meaningful deficit reduction were always somewhat dubious, but even granting the Democrats' rosiest assumptions, President Biden wiped out any deficit reduction when he announced his massive student loan giveaway 8 days--8 days--after the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law.
So no inflation reduction, no deficit reduction. Oh, one other thing: The Inflation Reduction Act will drive up energy bills for Americans.
So the question is: What was there to celebrate?
Well, for the Democrats, the Inflation Reduction Act marked a chance to finally push through some of their far-left, Green New Deal fantasies, things like electric vehicle tax credits to help wealthy Americans buy electric cars, more than $60 billion--$60 billion--for ``environmental justice priorities,'' including $1.9 billion for things like identifying gaps in tree canopy coverage, and the list goes on. So I think the Democrats are pretty satisfied with themselves over finally jamming through elements of their Green New Deal agenda.
Then, of course, they succeeded in extending increased ObamaCare subsidies that will push Americans off of private healthcare plans and into government-run care.
Then--then--there are the tax hikes. The current Democratic leader once said, ``You don't want to take money out of the economy when the economy is shrinking,'' like it has in the previous two quarters. But those days are gone. For the Democrats, raising taxes has become an article of faith.
And it goes far beyond raising money to help pay for their Big Government spending. The Democrats believe raising taxes on corporations and well-off Americans is good in and of itself, even if those tax hikes have a negative effect on less well-off Americans and the economy. The tax hikes that the Democrats have included in their so-called Inflation Reduction Act will, indeed, have a negative effect on our economy and on the hard-working Americans who help support it. The Democrats' tax hikes on businesses will result in slower growth, lower wages, and thousands of fewer jobs, and the Democrats' tax hikes on conventional energy will result in higher energy prices for working families.
In addition to raising taxes, the other main way the Inflation Reduction Act raises revenue is by increasing IRS audits and placing new burdens on taxpayers.
The Democrats' bill contains a whopping $80 billion in increased funding for the IRS. That is an increase in funding which represents six times the annual budget of the IRS today. More than half of those funds, or $46 billion, are earmarked for increased IRS enforcement. Just 4 percent is for improving customer service, which should tell you all you need to know about where the Democrats' real priorities lie.
The bill would provide for the hiring of as many as 87,000 new employees, which would more than double the current size of the Agency and make the IRS--make the IRS, if you can believe this--larger than Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard put together, combined.
In the lead-up to the passage of the Democrats' bill, the Biden administration put out a statement declaring that the money for IRS enforcement would not go to the increased audits of households making less than $400,000. Because we had reason to doubt that that would be the case, the Republicans put forward an amendment to the bill to prevent the IRS from using its new money to audit those Americans. Every Democrat--every single Democrat--voted against the amendment. So, I guess, the Democrats are happy to oppose more IRS audits of middle- class Americans in theory, but they don't want to cut off the possibility of those audits in practice if they end up needing them to help fund their Green New Deal spending.
I don't need to tell anyone that the IRS is notorious for mishandling sensitive taxpayer data. As recently as this month, we learned that the IRS had inadvertently posted confidential taxpayer data of around 120,000 individuals on its website--private taxpayer information that was available to the general public.
Then, of course, there was last year's leak, or hack, of confidential taxpayer information that was shared with the left-leaning ProPublica and was used to advance a partisan agenda for which, I might add, neither the IRS nor the Biden administration has provided any accountability.
Then there was the infamous targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny under the Obama IRS, and the list goes on.
I haven't even discussed the IRS's record of grossly underperforming--some would say nonexistent--customer service. During the 2022 tax season, just 10 percent of taxpayers' calls--10 percent of taxpayers' calls--to the IRS were answered by an IRS employee. What we need to be doing is holding the IRS accountable, not setting tens of thousands of new IRS agents loose on taxpayers' accounts.
Earlier this week, I joined my Republican colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee to introduce legislation to prevent the IRS from using its new funding to audit American workers or small business owners earning less than $400,000 per year.
I also introduced a bill this week, along with Senator Collins, to improve taxpayer service at the IRS. Our legislation, called the Increase Reliable Services Now Act, would prevent the IRS from hiring new employees for enforcement until customer service at the IRS had reached a more acceptable level. It is unacceptable--unacceptable--that taxpayers have a 1 in 10 chance of receiving assistance when calling the IRS, and the Agency should not be allowed to increase enforcement hires until it has achieved at least a basic level of customer service.
So we have 87,000 new employees, which is double--double--the size of the current IRS workforce, and we have $80 billion, which is six times the current annual budget of the IRS, with a specific focus: going after taxpayers in this country to try and get, raise--whatever--more revenue to fund the Democrats' Big Government fantasies. At the same time, 1 in 10 taxpayers is getting his calls returned at the IRS.
I will continue to work to increase IRS accountability and prevent hard-working Americans from being squeezed to fund Democrats' Green New Deal spending.
Like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan spending spree that came before it--which, I would add, helped plunge our country into our current inflation crisis--the Inflation Reduction Act is a bad deal for the American people, and all of the self-congratulatory White House parties in the world aren't going to change that basic fundamental fact.
Americans are experiencing serious economic hardship, and Democrats are doing nothing to help.
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