So now we have an IRS that will be twice as big, twice as intrusive, and twice as abusive. Congrats to Joe Biden.
Incredibly infuriating is the oft-repeated haughty claim by Maryland’s Dem Senator Ben Cardin: “If you’re not cheating on your taxes, you have nothing to worry about.”
Sure.
The 87,000 new agents are expected to conduct more than one million new audits. Anyone who has ever undergone the root canal surgery of an IRS investigation knows that the cost of defending yourself or your business can range from tens of thousands to millions of dollars.
Senators: you pay these costs to defend yourself even if you’re an honest taxpayer.
None of the Dems seem to care a wit about what this new IRS arsenal will cost private citizens and businesses. (It’s all about plucking more feathers from the geese.)
So here are some of the costs on the private sector as assembled by our friend Chris Edwards at Cato:
The Office of Management and Budget estimates that individuals and businesses currently spend 6.5 billion hours a year on federal tax paperwork.
This is the equivalent to 3.6 million people working full‐time on this unproductive activity. The late economist Walter Williams once famously calculated this is more man hours than to build every car, van, truck, and plane built in America.
This is also two and half times larger than our uniformed military of 1.4 million service members, as shown in the chart.
In order to combat Biden’s expanded IRS Army, private citizens and businesses will be forced to hire the equivalent of 140,000 more tax lawyers, accountants, bookkeepers, psychiatrists, etc. to combat the auditors.
A simple flat tax would reduce compliance costs by as much as 90%, but of course, this bill ADDS scores of NEW complexities to the tax code.
All weekend, we’ve heard from the media pundits that the Democrats have practically saved the planet from annihilation by passing the “historic climate change, health care, and energy bill.”
If it’s so historic, where was everyone?
We alerted readers on Friday that as many as 80 Dems might fail to show up for the floor debate and would vote absentee by proxy. That turned out to be exactly the number. For the “most historic vote in years,” these members mailed it in.
There were also 78 Republicans who voted against the massive tax and spend bill by proxy. That’s not something we will defend, but there is a BIG difference between failing to show up to vote no, and failing to show up to vote yes to change the laws of the land.
The House rules on proxy voting changed during Covid, but Covid is over. And there weren’t anywhere near 80 House Democrats (or 78 Rs) with the virus.
This strikes us as a clear violation of a Representative’s moral duty to show up for votes on vital issues. We list the 80 Democrats who voted yes by proxy below in the hopes that the people in these districts back home take note:
3) How An English Lit Major Made Canada's Decision To Mandate Vaccines
We at the Hotline have reported example after example of officials who advocated lockdowns during the pandemic by arguing they were “following the science." What science?
The latest outrage comes out of Canada. Rupa Subramanya, a Canadian journalist, reviewed public documents and discovered that Canada’s 2021 mandate that all government employees and travelers on trains and planes had to be vaccinated had no scientific basis.
Subramanya reports: “The bureaucrat in charge of crafting one of the world’s 'strongest vaccination mandates in the world', according to the bureaucrat herself and Trudeau, has an undergraduate degree in English literature and self-evidently didn’t have the scientific knowledge… Neither were there any doctors, epidemiologists and scientists on her team, a secretive panel whose membership is nowhere published.”
4) Europe Will Shut Off Hot Water And Scrounge For Firewood This Winter
All over Europe, people are preparing for a brutal winter caused by Russian cutoffs of oil and natural gas combined with an over-reliance on wind and solar power at the same time many countries are phasing out nuclear power.
Spain has barred all commercial buildings from setting their thermostat below 80 degrees in summer. It will also ban setting thermostats above 66 degrees in winter.
Many German cities have ended outdoor lighting of public buildings as well as shut off public fountains. Others have closed indoor swimming pools and switched off hot water in public buildings.
Wolfgang Hübschle, an economic advisor to city governments in Bavaria, warns that the region may have to shut down its breweries to ensure its chemical industry doesn’t face gas shortages.
Much of the general public is even more worried about winter. Check out the graph below on how many Germans are using Google to search out ways to obtain firewood this winter. It may be back to the Middle Ages for some people in Europe’s economic powerhouse in the coming months.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t give a pass to a single Democrat in the House on the Inflation Acceleration Act that passed with all D votes and no R votes. (Biden really is a “uniter” isn’t he!)
So poor Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine, in a district that Trump by six points, walked the plank and voted yes.
In defense of his vote to further bankrupt America, Golden read from the White House talking points:
“This isn’t Joe Biden’s crazy Build Back Better proposal. This is a bill that’s meant to ensure American energy dominance and independence.”
Wait, Congressman!
We HAD energy independence under Trump. It’s Biden’s lunatic green energy policies and the war on fossil fuels – with new taxes on the industry in this bill – that are making America guzzle gas and oil from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
