Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) doesn’t just think shrinking funding for the IRS — a GOP policy staple — is bad for the American treasury and the nation’s economic power. Wyden asserts that hamstringing the tax agency — responsible for collecting the revenues that fund the U.S. government — is reckless for the deleterious impact such measures will have on global security.
The Senator directly links the GOP plan to “offset” U.S. aid to Israel with IRS funding cuts to terrorism, especially as practiced by Hamas.
Slashing IRS enforcement is the most effective way to ensure Hamas gets the funding it needs to continue its atrocities. https://t.co/Pjrk9f4Ncx
— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) October 31, 2023
In a letter to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, Wyden asserts that “the IRS Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division can police fake charities and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division is one of the few law enforcement agencies with the skills to address sanctions evasion done via cryptocurrency.”
Referencing the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division (CI), Wyden says that “due to budget cuts, CI lost 26 percent of its special agents between 2010 and 2021. As a result, it conducted 46 percent fewer criminal investigations, including 48 percent fewer tax evasion investigations, 50 percent fewer investigations involving other financial crimes, such as terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, and money laundering, and 31 percent fewer narcotics related investigations.”
[NOTE: Even before the new Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024, which the Congressional Budget Office says will cost the U.S. far more than the $14.3 billion it claims, the CBO estimated in January that previous GOP-proposed legislation to curtail IRS funding would cost the U.S. $114 billion.]
Wyden asserts that the GOP’s consistent defanging of the IRS makes the U.S. less rich while making the world a more dangerous place. And notably, a dangerous world costs the U.S. far more than a safer one.
.jpg){kind=link}