How the Mar-a-Lago search has helped fuel GOP attacks on the IRS

Verbal attacks on federal law enforcement after the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate have become enmeshed with Republican criticism of a Democratic spending bill. The legislation does not direct the hiring of 87,000 armed agents. It does allot $80 billion over a decade throughout the agency to bolster taxpayer services and enforcement of the tax code. But as Republicans work to find their message in the days after their standard-bearer’s Florida residence was searched by the FBI, the verbal attacks on federal law enforcement have become enmeshed with another talking point tied to a totally different issue: the idea that Democrats are supercharging a tax agency to surveil regular Americans. Both issues came to a head last week as House Republicans returned to Washington to vote against the Inflation Reduction Act days after the search at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, riling up supporters by conjoining the two issues as examples of extreme federal government overreach by Democrats. While Republican members have stretched the truth about what the funding would do, the talking points are unlikely to go away. Several GOP strategists focused on House races described the funding for the IRS as a gift for their candidates to draw contrasts with Democratic opponents ahead of the midterm elections on an issue they say voters universally dislike. The Inflation Reduction Act gives the IRS more than $45 billion for tax enforcement that could be used to hire more agents and help close the “tax gap” of unpaid federal taxes. It also allots $25 billion for logistical operations within the agency, roughly $5 billion for business upgrades and another $3.2 billion to bolster taxpayer services. Democrats have argued that Republican cuts across all levels of the federal government have created a massive backlog of unprocessed taxpayer paperwork. An IRS report to Congress this year showed that the pandemic contributed to a drastic spike of unprocessed tax returns, from 7.4 million at the end of the 2019 filing period to 35.8 million by the same time in 2021. “While Democrats put people and country before politics and power, Republicans are knowingly lying to voters in defense of the wealthy tax cheats that back their campaigns,” said Tommy Garcia, a spokesman at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/how-mar-a-lago-raid-has-helped-fuel-gop-attacks-irs/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F37aeba1%2F62fe22451930ae1d20546727%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F9%2F57%2F62fe22451930ae1d20546727&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b