Late in the night this past Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced a vote to move forward with the Democrats’ multi-trillion-dollar big government spending package. I’ve been talking about this process and this bill for months, and it continues to get worse as time goes on. Last week, I sat down with several of my colleagues to discuss different parts of this bill which they find the most troubling. There’s a LOT wrong with this bill – including the fact Democrats can’t even tell us how many trillions of dollars it will cost the American taxpayer – but some of the provisions which my colleagues and I have gotten the most calls about have to do with the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The first issue, which I have brought up on numerous occasions, is the Biden administration’s proposal to beef up the IRS with an additional 88,000 agents to help with collections. For reference, this many agents could fill South Alabama’s new football stadium nearly 3.5 times. Additionally, this proposal would have given the IRS the ability to spy on the everyday banking transactions of essentially every American – this would include basic purchases, tithes to your church, and nearly everything you do. Americans all across the country found out about this and began calling their representatives. Thanks to these efforts, we have been able to fight back against this nonsense so far.
What’s even more concerning is Democrats are also wanting to give the IRS an additional $45 billion for “enforcement.” While it’s unclear what exactly they mean by “enforcement,” it’s worth pointing out the IRS currently has about 2,000 armed agents who have a track record of frequently mishandling and misusing their firearms. A recent report shows these armed agents have accidentally fired their weapons more often than they have purposely fired them, yet Democrats want to give them BILLIONS more for “enforcement.”
As soon as I found out about this, I introduced an amendment to this spending bill to prevent any further expansion of the IRS’s army of armed agents. The last thing we need is to hire more armed IRS agents, but the Democrats flat out refused to include my amendment. There is no good reason for the IRS to have armed agents, and there’s certainly no good reason to give them billions of dollars to hire even more agents. This is a horrible abuse of power because it does nothing more than endanger the lives and property of Americans.
Thankfully, the American people are paying attention to all the junk being slipped into this bill, and countless people all across the country are voicing opposition. Americans realize this bill is not good for them or their families, so it’s important for us to keep up the pressure on the Democrats who are trying to ram this through. While the final fate of this big government spending bill is unknown, I will continue keeping everyone informed about what exactly is and is not in it, and I will fight it every step of the way.
Jerry Carl represents Alabama’s First Congressional District. He lives in Mobile with his wife Tina.
