{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=32B46162-114F-4635-9535-EF73B864A095", "Thune: The Last Thing Hardworking Families Want is the IRS Knocking on Their Door", "2022-09-15", "2022", "2022-09", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Click here to watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today discussed how Democrats intend to pay for their so-called \u201cInflation Reduction Act\u201d by increasing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits and placing new burdens on taxpayers. Thune noted that the Democrats\u2019 bill would provide for the hiring of as many as 87,000 new IRS employees, which would more than double the current size of the agency and make it larger than the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard combined.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, August inflation numbers came out this week, and they weren\u2019t good.\n\n\u201cInflation was even higher than expected.\n\n\u201cAnd it was very clear that soaring prices are likely to continue for quite a while.\n\n\u201cBut as usual, that doesn\u2019t seem to concern Democrats one bit.\n\n\u201cThe president was asked Tuesday if he was concerned about August\u2019s even-worse-than-expected inflation report.\n\n\u201cHis answer?\n\n\u201c\u2018No, I\u2019m not.\u2019\n\n\u201cIt was just one more tone-deaf moment for the president and Democrats.\n\n\u201cOn Tuesday the president and Democrats gathered at the White House to congratulate themselves for having passed their so-called Inflation Reduction Act \u2013 a bill that will do nothing to reduce inflation.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s not just my opinion, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cThat was the conclusion of the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model.\n\n\u201cAnd of the Democrat chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who referred to the bill as the \u201cso-called Inflation Reduction Act\u201d on the Senate floor while admitting it would do nothing to solve our inflation crisis.\n\n\u201cBut that didn\u2019t stop Democrats from celebrating yesterday.\n\n\u201cFor most of us, of course, it\u2019s difficult to understand what there was to celebrate.\n\n\u201cLeaving aside the issue of 40-year high inflation, we already know that the bill will also fall short in another respect \u2013 on deficit reduction.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 claims that the bill would provide meaningful deficit reduction were always somewhat dubious, but even granting Democrats\u2019 rosiest assumptions, President Biden wiped out any deficit reduction when he announced his massive student loan giveaway eight days after the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law.\n\n\u201cSo no inflation reduction, no deficit reduction \u2026 oh, and the Inflation Reduction Act will drive up energy bills for Americans.\n\n\u201cSo what was there to celebrate?\n\n\u201cWell, for Democrats, the Inflation Reduction Act marked a chance to finally push through some of their far-left, Green New Deal fantasies.\n\n\u201cThings like electric vehicle tax credits to help wealthy Americans buy electric cars.\n\n\u201cMore than $60 billion for \u201cenvironmental justice priorities\u201d \u2013 including $1.9 billion for things like identifying gaps in tree canopy coverage.\n\n\u201cAnd the list goes on.\n\n\u201cSo I think Democrats are pretty satisfied with themselves over finally jamming through elements of their Green New Deal agenda.\n\n\u201cThen of course they succeeded in extending increased Obamacare subsidies that will push Americans off of private health care plans and into government-run care.\n\n\u201cAnd then there are the tax hikes.\n\n\u201cMr. President, the current Democrat leader once said, \u2018You don\u2019t want to take money out of the economy when the economy is shrinking\u2019 \u2013 like it has the previous two quarters.\n\n\u201cBut those days are long gone.\n\n\u201cFor Democrats, raising taxes has become an article of faith.\n\n\u201cAnd it goes far beyond raising money to help pay for their big-government spending.\n\n\u201cDemocrats believe raising taxes on corporations and well-off Americans is a good in and of itself \u2013 even if those tax hikes have a negative effect on less well-off Americans, and the economy.\n\n\u201cAnd the tax hikes Democrats have included in their so-called Inflation Reduction Act will indeed have a negative effect on our economy and on the hardworking Americans who help support it.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 tax hikes on businesses will result in slower growth, lower wages, and thousands fewer jobs.\n\n\u201cAnd Democrats\u2019 tax hikes on conventional energy will result in higher energy bills for working families.\n\n\u201cMr. President, 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.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 bill contains a whopping $80 billion for the IRS.\n\n\u201cMore than half of those funds, or $46 billion, are earmarked for increased IRS enforcement.\n\n\u201cJust 4 percent is for improving customer service \u2013 which should tell you all you need to know about where Democrats\u2019 real priorities lie.\n\n\u201cThe bill would provide for the hiring of as many as 87,000 new IRS employees \u2013 which would more than double the current size of the agency and make the IRS larger than Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard put together.\n\n\u201cMr. President, in the lead-up to passage of Democrats\u2019 bill, the Biden administration put out a statement declaring that the money for IRS enforcement would not go to increased audits of households making less than $400,000.\n\n\u201cBecause we had reason to doubt that would be the case, Republicans put forward an amendment to the bill to prevent the IRS from using its new money to audit those Americans.\n\n\u201cEvery Democrat \u2013 every Democrat \u2013 voted against the amendment.\n\n\u201cI guess Democrats are happy to oppose more IRS audits of middle-class Americans in theory, but they don\u2019t 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.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I don\u2019t need to tell anyone that the IRS is notorious for mishandling sensitive taxpayer data.\n\n\u201cAs recently as this month, we learned that the IRS had inadvertently posted confidential taxpayer data for around 120,000 individuals on its website \u2013 private taxpayer information that was available to the general public.\n\n\u201cThen of course there was last year\u2019s leak or hack of confidential taxpayer information that was shared with the left-leaning ProPublica and used to advance a partisan agenda \u2013 for which, I might add, neither the IRS nor the Biden administration has provided any accountability.\n\n\u201cThen there was the infamous targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny under the Obama IRS.\n\n\u201cAnd the list goes on.\n\n\u201cAnd I haven\u2019t even discussed the IRS\u2019 record of grossly underperforming \u2013 some would say nonexistent \u2013 customer service.\n\n\u201cDuring the 2022 tax season, just 10 percent of taxpayer calls \u2013 10 percent \u2013 were answered by an IRS employee.\n\n\u201cWhat we need to be doing is holding the IRS accountable, not setting tens of thousands of new IRS agents loose on taxpayer accounts.\n\n\u201cEarlier 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.\n\n\u201cI also introduced a bill this week \u2013 along with Senator Collins \u2013 to improve taxpayer service at the IRS.\n\n\u201cOur legislation \u2013 the Increase Reliable Services Now Act \u2013 would prevent the IRS from hiring new employees for enforcement until customer service at the IRS has reached a more acceptable level.\n\n\u201cIt is unacceptable that taxpayers have a 1 in 10 chance of receiving assistance when calling the IRS.\n\n\u201cAnd the agency should not be allowed to increase enforcement hires until it has achieved a basic level of customer service.\n\n\u201cI will continue to work to increase IRS accountability and prevent hardworking Americans from being squeezed to fund Democrats\u2019 Green New Deal spending.\n\n\u201cMr. President, like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan spending spree before it \u2013 which helped plunge our country into our current inflation crisis \u2013 the Inflation Reduction Act is a bad deal for the American people.\n\n\u201cAnd all the self-congratulatory White House parties in the world won\u2019t change that fact.\n\n\u201cAmericans are experiencing serious economic hardship \u2026 and Democrats are doing nothing to help.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:29:59Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=32B46162-114F-4635-9535-EF73B864A095"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.0124921575188637, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": 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