President Joe Biden’s White House has said it would veto the House Republican bill that would defund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and take back the $72 billion funds the agency planned to use in hiring thousands of staff over ten years.
"If the President were presented with H.R. 23 — or any other bill that enables the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to cheat on their taxes, while honest and hard-working Americans are left to pay the tab — he would veto it."https://t.co/Geuf9kde6P
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) January 10, 2023
“If the President were presented with H.R. 23 – or any other bill that enables the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to cheat on their taxes, while honest and hard-working Americans are left to pay the tab – he would veto it,” the White House said in a statement.
The White House also claimed that the bill would protect wealthy tax cheats at the expense of middle-class taxpayers.
The Democrat-led Senate has vowed to block the bill, rendering the White House’s veto threat unnecessary.
Democrat-led Congress approved $80 billion in new funding for the IRS to hire staff as part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. However, Republicans opposed the funding and moved to block it on Monday after retaking the House.
🚨 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.
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) January 10, 2023
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) and other House GOP members argued that the funding would target the middle-class and small businesses to fund the Democrats’ reckless spending.
“To go after small businesses, hard-working Americans to try to raise money for reckless spending, reckless spending that has caused $31 trillion in debt in this nation,” Duncan said.
GOP lawmakers argued that the IRS would use the extra fund to hire 87,000 new agents to target Americans.
The Veto threat follows the Biden administration’s plan to obstruct the GOP’s congressional investigation of the White House.
White House special counsel Richard Sauber turned down Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) oversight request because they were in the House minority when they made the request. Sauber claimed that Congress did not delegate such oversight authority to individual members of Congress.
Jordan and Comer asked for information on the administration’s response to the border and fentanyl crisis, the Biden family’s influence peddling, the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the energy crisis and the COVID origins.
