CBO: Actually, The “Inflation Reduction Act” Will Cause More Audits For Working Class

Authored by Jazz Shaw via HotAir (emphasis ours),

A disturbing pattern has emerged when it comes to the messaging we’re seeing out of the White House in general and the Press Secretary in particular. They seem to believe that if you keep saying something that’s wrong over and over again, it will eventually either become true, or at least people will start to believe it.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

That’s truly been the case with the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that just passed in the House on a party-line vote. ‘This bill will lower inflation.’ (No, it will probably increase inflation or possibly not affect it.) ‘The bill will reduce the deficit.’ (Nope. That’s not what the models show.) ‘This bill will raise GDP.’ (Care to try again?) And then there’s the latest claim that the massive army of new IRS agents, many of them heavily armed but not trained in firearms handling very well, will not result in more audits of working-class people and will only impact those making more than $400k. They’ve said it over and over again. But the Congressional Budget Office begs to differ. (Free Beacon)

A Congressional Budget Office report found that the Internal Revenue Service will collect billions of dollars from auditing low- and middle-income Americans under the White House-backed “Inflation Reduction Act,” contradicting Biden administration claims, according to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Fox News confirmed the report, finding the CBO informed congressional Republicans that, under the act, audits of taxpayers making under $400,000 will account for about $20 billion in additional revenue.

The news comes after high-ranking Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, assured Americans that the IRS would not increase audits of people earning under $400,000.

There was a time when the members of Congress didn’t generally make too many claims about the fiscal impact of new legislation until the CBO had scored it. Apparently, that quaint practice is no longer part of the day-to-day routine on the Hill. The CBO estimates that audits of people making less than Joe Biden’s claimed minimum income will produce an additional $20 billion in revenue for Uncle Sam. That’s a lot of money even in these days of freewheeling deficit spending. And it directly contradicts what the White House has been telling us. Of course, it’s too late now.

I will agree that there have been some inaccurate claims about this bill making the rounds, particularly in conservative circles. The nearly 90,000 new IRS workers will not be hired all at once, for example. They will be hired over a period of ten years and some of them will replace current agents who will retire. But there will still be tens of thousands of new workers and many will come in the door very soon.

The climate portion of the bill isn’t 100% hot garbage, though at least 90% of it certainly is. There will be some funding for improvements to the energy grid infrastructure and the easing of some regulatory hurdles for the construction of nuclear power plants. But most of those positive aspects of the plan will be effectively wiped out by all of the green energy subsidies and new fees imposed on the fossil fuel industry.

But at the end of the day, the claimed purpose of this legislation is little more than a bad joke being played on the taxpayers. The supposed “inflation reduction” claims have already been fully debunked. The Wharton School of Business concluded that the bill’s impact on inflation will be “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” And it will actually have a negative impact on GDP for many years to come.

These people in Congress and the White House are standing there on the world stage and lying to your faces in broad daylight. Yes, I realize that a story about politicians lying is generally a “dog bites man” type of report. But they could at least try a little harder to fool us, couldn’t they?