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Floor Speech
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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, last month, in a completely partisan process, Senate Democrats pushed through their progressive and deceivingly named Inflation Reduction Act. That bill was a disaster, as it was full of reckless tax increases and spending.
Perhaps the worst part of it was that it authorized $80 billion in new funding to the IRS--$80 billion. For reference, that is about the same as what we allocated for Florida's entire State budget when I was Governor, and Florida is the third largest State in the Nation. Even though the IRS does a poor job with the resources it currently has, the Democrats opted to supersize the IRS so they could fund 87,000 new IRS agents, some of whom will be armed and willing to use deadly force to carry out their duties.
So, while the Democrats are calling to defund the police and are leaving our Border Patrol agents without the tools they need to secure the southern border, they are happy to enlarge the IRS. We don't even have 20,000 Border Patrol agents--a quarter of the number of new IRS agents the Democrats want; yet they have now approved 87,000 additional IRS agents. That is insane.
That many agents under the direction of President Biden should concern every American. We all remember that when Joe Biden was Vice President, the IRS went after conservative groups and Tea Party organizations. Now, armed with tens of billions in new funding and tens of thousands of new agents, what is stopping Joe Biden from directing the IRS to go after groups he doesn't like? What about pregnancy resource centers or Second Amendment groups?
Here is what the Democrats are doing: They are turning the IRS into a super Agency to audit more Americans so they can fund even more of their reckless tax-and-spend agenda. Let's not forget that last year, the Democrats wanted the IRS to spy on nearly every American's bank account and track one's everyday transactions. American families can see straight through Biden's plans, and they are furious. We all should be furious.
Without a single Republican vote, the Democrats authorized 87,000 more IRS agents--doubling the size of the Agency--all to pull as many dollars as they can away from hard-working families and small businesses so they can fund liberal projects and appease their radical base with more government bailouts.
Case in point: Biden's illegal order to transfer student loan debt from borrowers to taxpayers. Someone has to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars of debt that these borrowers voluntarily took on. Now, instead of the borrowers paying for their own educations, that burden is now borne by every American taxpayer. You didn't go to college? The Democrats don't care. You will pay the debt of lawyers and doctors. Have you already paid off your loans? Biden doesn't want to hear it. Tough luck. Your taxes are the money pot for other people's student debts, and if Democrats are going to keep declaring everything to be free, Biden is going to need a lot more taxpayer money.
That, my fellow Americans, is how we get full circle back to the supersized IRS. It is a vicious cycle to fund a radical, socialist agenda. We have to stop it now.
I am here to do what countless Floridians have asked me to do--strike this terrible policy from law. It is time to rein in the Federal Government, and that work begins with putting a stop to Biden's IRS army. My bill would simply repeal this disastrous IRS expansion, and I ask all of my colleagues to support it.
4798. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I agree with my colleague that if you owe taxes, you should pay your taxes, but what is inconsistent with what my colleague just said is that we had an amendment vote that would say that none of these agents could go after anybody making less than $400,000 a year. Every Democrat, I believe, in the Senate voted against that. So the goal is, absolutely, we should make sure that wealthy taxpayers pay everything they owe, but we had an amendment that would make sure this was focused on wealthy taxpayers--this was during a vote just before we left on recess--and every Democrat voted against that.
For all of those who are watching, here is what you are going to see: The Democratic Party has created a platform to audit more Americans-- not just wealthy Americans but all Americans. This isn't about fairness; this is about power. The Democrats want to spy on your bank transactions, and they want to send 87,000 more IRS agents on the streets to collect the bill for their reckless spending.
Joe Biden has pitched his provision in the image of Robin Hood taking from the rich, but in reality, this expansion is in the image of the Sheriff of Nottingham stealing from the poor and the working class.
None of us should be surprised the Democrats are doubling down on the radical IRS expansion policies. We all should be pretty mad. When the Republicans take control of Congress in January, you can expect that we will do everything in our power to repeal this terrible policy.
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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. The easiest way to solve my colleague's issue would have been to propose an amendment to make sure that we didn't go after taxpayers making less than $400,000 a year, but not one Democrat did that. All they did was just vote against this and then after the fact say: Well, it was a language issue. If it were simply a language issue, we could have solved it that night.
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