The vast majority of Americans believe Congress should repeal funding for new IRS agents, Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States Action group said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday, citing new polling conducted in partnership with the Trafalgar Group.
Meckler said the results of the survey are not necessarily surprising, as sentiments toward the IRS are not generally positive. Yet Congress, via the Inflation Reduction Act, allotted billions to expand the federal agency, adding 87,000 IRS agents whom critics said will be used to target middle class Americans.
“The idea of hiring 87,000 new IRS agents actually is pretty terrifying to most Americans. You know, you get that note in the mail that says you’re being audited or whatever. It’s not a good day you get a call from the IRS,” Meckler said, detailing the findings of the survey, which found 60 percent of Americans want Congress to reverse the hiring of those IRS agents. Meckler noted that most Republicans and independents want Congress to reverse that hiring, as do a quarter of Democrats.
Notably, the House-led GOP has already voted to repeal the army of 87,000 IRS agents as its first order of business.
“House Republicans just voted unanimously to repeal the Democrats’ army of 87,000 IRS agents. This was our very first act of the new Congress, because government should work for you, not against you. Promises made. Promises kept,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on January 9:
However, the future of this move remains uncertain in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Meckler expressed hope that moderate Democrats would take action but believes it would be unlikely.
“Again, the IRS is just inherently unpopular among the American people. I think the problem with getting it done in the Senate is what Democrats have done,” Meckler said, noting that advocates of expanding the IRS have “convinced their constituents that the only people that are going to be audited, the only people that are going to pay these 87,000 IRS agents are very wealthy people.” He noted that “people at the lowest end of the income scale are five times more likely to be audited by the IRS than wealthier people.”
“The IRS targets poor people because they can’t afford the lawyers and they can’t afford the accountants to fight. And so that’s who they target,” he said, explaining that proponents of expanding the IRS have convinced their constituents that it would not be so.
LISTEN:
“If it makes it to the president’s desk, I think he’s highly likely to veto it, mainly because he really actually doesn’t care about the American people. He doesn’t care what they think. I don’t think he even necessarily knows what they think,” Meckler added, noting that past abuse at the hands of the IRS, which targeted conservative organizations, largely sparked the Tea Party movement.
“I got my start just like you did out of the Tea Party movement,” Meckler told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle. “And during that time period, what we saw is … the IRS targeting conservative organizations and conservative individuals, not just for audit, but denying them their charitable status when they were filing for charitable registration and just generally harassing conservatives.”
“Having watched the IRS and been intimately involved with that, we ended up suing the IRS — funding a lawsuit against the IRS class action. They ended up having to settle that class action for $3.7 million. It’s the only time I’m ever aware of the IRS ever having to pay out like that. And yet, that might sound satisfying; it’s not because what I saw is there was literally no reform that came out of that,” he said, noting that “the same things that were in place that allowed them to attack Tea Party groups are still in place.”
“Now, you add 87,000 agents and a lot of money to the IRS, and there’s no doubt in my mind: they’re going to weaponize that just like they’ve weaponized the DOJ, the FBI, [and] every other agency against conservatives,” he added.