srothstein wrote: ↑Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:26 am
I am also convinced that there are no essential duties left to be performed by 99% of the federal law enforcement agencies. With the exception of border patrol and the Coast Guard, we could do away with ALL the other federal law enforcement agencies by simply authorizing the states (and their political subdivisions) to enforce federal law.
Wouldn't that make the Founders happy? Instead, we keep growing all aspects of federal enforcement. When I got back from church, the reconciliation process still seemed to be slogging away in the Senate for the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022," with the democrats now assured of passage of it in some form. Of the several aspects of HR 5376 that has me shaking my head, one is the part that appears in the original bill on pages 32-34. The IRS gets a new,
extra, beyond-current-budget allocation of $25,326,400,000 for "Operations Support," and a tidy $45,637,400,000 for "Enforcement."
Uncle Joe has repeatedly said that no American with an income less than $400K will see a tax increase. According to 2019 tax filings, that cutoff represents only the top 1.8% of all U.S. income earners. Joe's other favorite harangue--and the rationale for the new 15% minimum corporate tax--has been that
55 of the country's largest companies paid no income tax in 2020. To that I'd say, first: COVID. Second, those data come from the Institute on Taxation and Economic policy. But if we look closely at
their 2021 report, we find that
none of the leftist-hated 10 largest U.S. oil & gas companies are on the list, but companies as small as Treehouse Foods (only $8 million in pre-tax revenue) supposedly makes the list of "55 of the largest corporations in America [that] paid no federal corporate income taxes." In fact, only 60% of the 55 companies had pre-tax earnings of $300 million or over; 45% had pre-tax earnings of $500 million or more. Evidently the way to boost the growth of the economy and pull us out of stagflation is to make a company's investing in its own growth a substantial tax disincentive. Yeah;
that'll help.
So where does the need to beef-up the law enforcement arm of the IRS to the tune of $45.64 billion come from? I mean, if we look at the total 2020 annual budgets--people, training, equipment, vehicles, buildings & maintenance...the whole 9 yards--for the police departments of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin
combined, the new IRS enforcement allocation (
not counting the additional $25.3 billion for operations support) would be enough to run all those cities' law enforcement operations
for 19 years.
EDITED: The "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" has passed the Senate on, as expected, a 51-50 vote, with Kamala "I Talk Gooder" Harris breaking the tie. Schumer is at the podium right now taking his victory lap and thanking everyone up to and including former staff members. You'd think he'd just won a presidential election...Lord perish the thought.
