A friend and I overhead another table repeating a false narrative that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is hiring hires 87,000 new ‘armed’ IRS agents. The keyword (i.e., ‘hook’) is ‘armed.’ The claim is false. Whether the folks repeating was knowledgeable or not, they weren’t alone. Social media folks and news personalities (i.e., FOX News and others) also repeated the falsehood. Even 88-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley repeated. What they are saying is, “Watch out everyone. The IRS Bogeymen are coming.”
Instead of preparing for dementia, Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, heart disease, or any other disease that 88-year-olds tend to acquire, Grassley dropped a whopper. “Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa with these [sic ‘?’], because I think they’re going after middle class and small business people because they think that anybody that has pass-through income is a crook, and they aren’t paying their fair share, and we’re going to go after them.” Brian Kilmeade (FOX News) warned “… Biden’s new army” of armed IRS agents could (inflection ‘could’) “hunt down and kill middle-class taxpayers that don’t pay enough.” The chair of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club (Ok. Ok. Chair of the Republican National Committee), Ronna McDaniel, suggested, “… ‘SWAT team(s)’ is coming for your kids’ lemonade stand”. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted, “Do you make $75,000 or less? Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.”
All the questions inflamed by the above were rhetorical, which is, questions parsed as statements. Most false commentators consistently toss rhetorical questions like pennies into the spare change bins. For example, Grassley subjectively stated the IRS was coming to shoot any small business owner who didn’t pay up. If anyone pushes back, all he has to say is, “Well, I was just asking a question.”
Grassley and McCarthy understand most constituents fail to perform any modicum of research. Had anyone performed any, one would quickly assess that the bullshit doesn’t add up. The numbers don’t match the argument.
Whether you agree with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act or not, the legislation directs nearly $80 Billion to the IRS over ten years. The repeatedly cited 87,000 IRS Agent(s) does not reflect how IRS funds will be utilized. The number comes from a chart buried in a 2021 treasury department report about the need to increase the IRS budget. IRS leaders note that the agency has not yet outlined specific plans for funding over the next decade, and any new employees hired will fill a variety of roles.
In FY 2021, the IRS had about 78,661 employees. Of that 78,000 plus employees, roughly 2,100 special agents carry firearms (according to IRS’s Criminal Investigation (CI) department). In 2020, the U.S. Small Business Administration stated there were 31.7 million small businesses in the U.S. So, 2,100 armed IRS agents for 31.7 million small businesses equates to one armed IRS agent for every 15,095 businesses. Good f*****g luck with that.
Grassley needs to retire, and McCarthy needs to learn how to perform research. America needs leaders, not idiots.
But our elected idiots continue to amaze: Senator Rick Scott (Fla.), head of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club (Ok. Ok. Head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee), sent an open letter last week warning Americans not to work for the IRS. He falsely claimed that the Democrats’ climate, energy, and tax bill would add “roughly 87,000 agents” at the IRS, creating “an IRS super-police force.”
“The IRS made it very clear that one of the ‘major duties’ of these new positions is to ‘be willing to use deadly force.’” Scott said. “… The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors, and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing to kill them.”
So, watch out everyone. The IRS Bogeymen are coming. Sigh! What a crock of s***. Senator Rick Scott (Fla.) needs psychiatric help. Maybe Grassley and McCarthy do as well. Gentlemen, this a time for serious leaders willing to lead. Aren’t your fifteen minutes up by now? Go away!