Happy New Year! I hope everybody had a nice and relaxing holiday. As the House and Senate gets to work, we at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) have quite a bit on our plate. The first order of business must be to address government spending and the $31 trillion national debt. After that, wow, so much.  Reforming the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is at the top of the list. With an unprecedented infusion of $80 billion and the goal of hiring 87,000 new agents, this has to be addressed by the 118th Congress. TPA will be releasing our Roadmap to Fiscal Sanity Issue Briefs later this month laying out our whole agenda. In the meantime, be sure to visit our website to be kept up to date on what we are doing. Your feedback is always welcome.
 
IRS Accountability – Job #1

As the 118th Congress gets to work, the first piece of legislation offered by the House of Representatives is The Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act (we’re particularly fond of the name). This legislation would rescind the additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to hire 87,000 new agents, which was allocated in the Inflation Reduction Act. TPA applauds this bill, which would stop the IRS’s targeting of small business and lower-middle income families. Americans have already felt the sting from this past year’s historic inflation and giving the IRS an additional $80 billion in funding for increased audits on low-to-middle income families and small businesses was never the answer. Historically, IRS audits disproportionately impact the most financially vulnerable. The Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act is a great step in ensuring that 87,000 new IRS agents are not able to target Americans who do not have the resources to fight back. For years, the IRS has been rife with fraud and abuse from releasing private citizens confidential tax information to disclosing private donor lists to political opponents.

In addition to more of your money, the IRS also wants more control of your life. Tucked away in the massive new giveaway to the IRS is $15 million to study how the agency could begin preparing and filing annual tax returns on behalf of all taxpayers. This would be an added responsibility on top of the agency’s existing and extensive mandate of collecting taxes and maximizing revenue for the federal government. It’s not only a waste of taxpayer dollars, it is also a blatant conflict of interest.  Amid record inflation, the federal government should be looking for ways to save taxpayer dollars. Yet, a February 2022 study from Govini estimated the costs of a government run tax preparation system would match or eclipse the $21.2 billion that the federal government spent over one decade to prop up Healthcare.gov.  A government-run tax preparation system is a solution in search of a problem. Over the past nine years, more than 113 million Americans have used private sector options to file their taxes for free online. Millions more will do so again next tax season. The government should not be competing with a more efficient and cost-effective private sector that is trusted by taxpayers and delivers timely results for free for millions of Americans. Multiple former IRS commissioners — from both sides of the political aisle—have deemed this proposal “unwise” in the face of the other critical problems facing the agency. These include the millions of outstanding tax returns from last year that are still unaddressed. At the end of May 2022, according to a report from the IRS’s independent watchdog agency, the IRS had an “unprecedented” backlog of 21.3 million unprocessed paper tax returns for businesses and individuals – an increase of 1.3 million from the same time last year.
 

Don’t FERC With U.S. Energy Needs

In September 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer electric bills rose 15.8 percent year-over-year, the largest increase since 1981. As winter descends on the northeast, utility companies are trying to prepare customers for extreme spikes in energy rates. And while it’s easy to open your monthly bill and curse the public utility that mailed it, the truth is, many of these price hikes are the result of bad ideas and policy coming out of Washington, D.C. Then-candidate Joe Biden proclaimed on the campaign trail, “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.” This is one promise he is committed to keeping, it appears. His administration has throttled oil production by reducing acreage available for drilling, slowing timelines for drilling permit approvals, and essentially stopping lease sales. Most notoriously, Biden killed the Keystone XL Pipeline project, which would have moved up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil daily to U.S. refineries from Canada. The Biden administration is even working to politicize otherwise non-political federal agencies. For example, under the Biden administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been transformed from an agency “that regulates the transmission and wholesale sale of electricity and natural gas in interstate commerce and regulates the transportation of oil by pipeline in interstate commerce” to a policy shop focused on completely ending natural gas transportation. 
 
Last February, FERC Chairman Richard Glick put forward a regulation which would have forced companies seeking approval for a pipeline project to account for all associated greenhouse gas emissions. Glick, and the other Democratic FERC Commissioners who backed the regulation, knew perfectly well complying with this regulation would have been nearly impossible. That was the point – and would likely have ended new permitting of natural gas pipelines. The backlash against Glick’s plan was swift and strong and he quickly converted the policy into a mere “draft.” Nevertheless, the backlash was enough to stop Biden’s plan to renominate Glick as FERC Chair. In fact, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) played a key role in torpedoing Glick’s nomination. Unfortunately, it is now being reported that Biden is thinking of nominating Commissioner Allison Clements to serve as the next FERC Chair. Clements would bring all of Glick’s policy baggage to the post. She supported his “draft” pipeline regulation. She would also add unresolved ethic concerns. According to Fox News, “A top Biden administration official briefed a ‘funders only’ event hosted earlier this year by the Energy Foundation, her former employer, according to records obtained by an energy policy group. Allison Clements, a Democratic commissioner on the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), ultimately agreed to attend the Jan. 10 funder event despite an Energy Foundation official suggesting her presence might be ‘inappropriate,’ according to text messages and emails obtained by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) and shared with Fox News Digital.”
  
In a somewhat surprising move, Biden named Commissioner Willie Phillips to serve as “acting chair” this week until a permanent chair can be nominated and confirmed. The appointment begs the question as to why not simply nominate Phillips as permanent chair. Well, Phillips is viewed as a moderate Democratic voice on the Commission. He sometimes sides with Republican Commissioners and after initially voicing support for Glick’s greenhouse gas emissions mandate, he recognized its onerous nature and backed off.  Biden must still nominate a permanent Chair of FERC and Americans should remain concerned that he may nominate Clements. By nominating Allison Clements as Chair of FERC, President Biden would demonstrate yet again it was “not a joke” when he said he’d end fossil fuels.  This means energy costs will continue to rise and progressive activist groups will have an insider at an agency with the power to kill the natural gas industry as Americans struggle to pay utility bills.

Blogs:
 
Tuesday:   TPA Applauds Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act
   
Wednesday: America’s Broadband Revolution
 
Thursday:  The CDC’s Peddling of Misinformation About Vaping is a Threat to Public Health
  
Friday: On National Technology Day, Let’s Recognize the Power of Innovation to Reduce Smoking
 
 
Media:
 
December 26, 2022: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about problems at the Postal Service.
 
December 28, 2022:  National Review ran TPA’s op-ed, “America’s Broadband Revolution.”
 
January 2, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about New Year’s resolutions for federal, state, and local officials.

January 2, 2022: Inside Sources ran TPA's op-ed, "Broadband Costs are Affordable."

January 2, 2022: The Daily Courier (Connellsville, Penn.) ran TPA's op-ed, "Broadband Costs are Affordable."
 
January 4, 2023:  The Daily Caller ran TPA’s op-ed, “If Throwing Money At The IRS Didn’t Work Before, Why Does Elizabeth Warren Think It Will Now?”
 
January 4, 2023:  The Center Square ran TPA’s op-ed, “Postal Service can learn from neighbor to the north.”

January 4, 2022: The Waco Tribune Herald (Waco, Tex.) ran TPA's op-ed, "Broadband Costs are Affordable."

January 4, 2022: The Bristol Herald Courier (Bristol, Vir.) ran TPA's op-ed, "Broadband costs are affordable; in fact, prices have dropped."
 
January 5, 2023:  I appeared on WBOB 600 AM (Jacksonville, Fla.) to talk about the economic outlook for 2023.
 
January 5, 2023:  WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about the minimum wage in Maryland.
 
January 5, 2023:  Townhall.com ran TPA’s op-ed, “Don’t FERC With U.S. Energy Needs.”

January 5, 2022: The Daily Iberian (New Iberia, Lous.) ran TPA's op-ed, "Postal Service can learn from neighbor to the north."


Have a great weekend!