Hi,

Last week’s circus on the House floor was an absurd means to an inevitable
end: Kevin McCarthy is the new Speaker of the House.

This week, the McCarthy era began with a grossly predictable assault on
federal spending. The first vote of the Republican controlled chamber to
defund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) successfully passed in the
House.^1

They specifically want to undo recent investments made to the IRS designed
to strengthen the agency’s ability to crack down on millionaire,
billionaire, and corporate tax cheats. In other words: they want to issue
handouts to their wealthy donors.

[ [link removed] ]Sign the petition: the US Senate must reject House Republicans' attempt
to undermine the IRS for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

ADD YOUR NAME

Who will benefit from a weakened IRS? Notably Donald Trump. His recently
released tax returns expose a strategy of overseas bank accounts and
manipulative real estate evaluations that effectively allowed him to dodge
taxes.^2,3 This is exactly why Democrats included an extra $80 billion in
funding for the IRS in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.^1 To go after
ultra-wealthy tax cheats like Trump.

Republican’s response has been to paint the I.R.S. investments as
“militarizing the IRS” and creating “hordes of armed IRS agents” that
would target small businesses and working Americans.^4 They pretend to be
serving the interests of working Americans when really, they’re just
following the classic GOP playbook of catering to the ultra-wealthy.

This hypocritical fear mongering is also on display in the name of their
bill, “The Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act.” A more
appropriate name might be something like “The Millionaire, Billionaire,
and Corporate Taxpayer Protection Act.”

Claiming their legislation will help working Americans when in reality it
will only benefit the top one percent is about to be the status quo for
the McCarthy run House. We need to rely on the Democrat-run Senate to hold
the line and prevent this harmful legislation from becoming law.

[ [link removed] ]Sign the petition: Tell the US Senate to reject House Republicans
attempts to defund the IRS!

Thanks for taking action,

Miguel and the team at Demand Progress

[ [link removed] ]DONATE

Sources:
1. NY Times, “House Republicans Vote to Rescind I.R.S. Funding,”
[ [link removed] ]January 9, 2023.
2. The Independent, “Trump had foreign bank accounts in China, UK and
Ireland as president and one year paid more foreign tax than US,”
[ [link removed] ]December 30, 2022.
3. CNN, “Key takeaways from six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax
returns,” [ [link removed] ]December 30, 2022.
4. Reuters, “Fact Check-The IRS is not hiring thousands of armed agents,
job ads show opening for specialized unit,” [ [link removed] ]August 17, 2022.
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