GOP Pressure Builds on Jerry Moran to Walk Away from ‘Infrastructure’ Deal

Republicans have increasingly put pressure on Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) to drop support for the bipartisan “infrastructure” deal.

Moran, one of the Senate Republicans involved in the bipartisan infrastructure negotiations, has increasingly become targeted by conservative groups to drop support for the bipartisan deal.

The Coalition to Protect American Workers, a group founded by former Mike Pence chief of staff Marc Short, dropped a six-figure ad pressuring Moran to drop support for the deal, particularly the deal’s increased $40 billion funding for the IRS to audit Americans’ tax returns.

“If Joe Biden gets his way, they are coming: IRS agents,” the narrator said in the ad. The ad finishes with, “We need Senator Moran to step up and stop Biden’s radical plan.”

Senate Republicans have become increasingly skeptical of the plan to “super-size” the IRS’s mission to audit Americans to find revenue to pay for the $1 trillion plan.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — who left the group of bipartisan senators over President Joe Biden’s threat to veto the bipartisan bill until Congress passes the partisan reconciliation infrastructure bill — said, “A lot of this can be pie in the sky.”

Tax experts are also skeptical that the IRS can increase revenue by scouring Americans’ tax records.

Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, noted that hiring additional IRS agents and enforcement staff “will take time.” The increased enforcement staff could lead to the IRS hounding Americans’ over their tax returns.

The ad warned that IRS agents would be “aggressively coming for every dime they can grab at your house and our small businesses.”

The Kansas Republican has argued that the infrastructure plan would lead to higher taxes, although it remains possible that more Americans would have to pay more to the IRS around tax time.

Moran said:

Improving our infrastructure is vital to our nation’s economy, safety and to our ability to compete in the global economy. We can pass an infrastructure package in a bipartisan way without raising taxes, without eliminating the Trump tax cuts, without recklessly spending trillions of dollars and without eliminating the filibuster.

Moran has also sought assurances from moderate Democrats such as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) that they would not support the more leftist reconciliation bill; however, he has yet to receive a convincing answer.

“I have little comfort from everything I’ve seen or heard to date,” Moran said.