Convention of States Action president Mark Meckler said during a Saturday interview with Breitbart News that a substantial majority of Americans favor a Congressional repeal of the funding allocated last year to hire 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents. Meckler cited a new poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group along with his organization as authority.
Meckler said the “idea of hiring 87,000 new IRS agents is actually pretty terrifying to most Americans.” He noted that the new poll shows 60% of American voters want to see the vast expansion of the IRS reversed. A sizable majority of Republican and independent voters said the funding should be withdrawn, and even a quarter of Democrats agreed.
Most Americans don’t believe the Biden administration’s claims that the 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) workers it’s hiring will target the wealthy, a Convention of States Action / Trafalgar poll found. https://t.co/RvTPZrpesg
— 🚨FlaRedState 🇺🇸❤🐘 (@FlaRedState) August 31, 2022
One of the first acts of the newly seated GOP-majority House was to vote to rescind the new IRS funding. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said the vote was a case of “promises made, promises kept.”
In his January 9 statement, McCarthy added, “House Republicans just voted unanimously to repeal the Democrats’ army of 87,000 IRS agents. This was our very first act of the new Congress, because government should work for you, not against you.”
Of course, the bill now moves on to the Senate, where its outlook is much less clear. Meckler said he has hope that some moderate Senate Democrats facing reelection in 2024 could join with the 49 GOP members to pass the measure. If the Senate passes the measure, it would then fall on Joe Biden to veto the legislation, which would run directly counter to most voters’ wishes.
Meckler noted that the bill is important in that it is a single-issue vote on doubling the size of the IRS. He said the agency “is just inherently unpopular among the American people.”
He did admit that Democratic messaging has been consistent and has worked to “convince their constituents that the only people that are going to be audited, the only people that are going to pay these 87,000 IRS agents are very wealthy people.”
However, he noted that “people at the lowest end of the income scale are five times more likely to be audited by the IRS than wealthier people.” IRS targeting of the poorest taxpayers is efficient because they are much less able to afford expensive lawyers and accountants to battle the government.
Meckler added that if the IRS gets the new funding and 87,000 additional agents, he does not doubt that the administration will “weaponize that just like they’ve weaponized the DOJ, the FBI and every other agency against conservatives.”
