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The United States officially reached our debt ceiling today and despite all the fears of death and peril, we somehow managed to make it through.
If you are reading this, you were somehow lucky enough to survive the debt ceiling Armageddon.
All kidding aside, this is how Democrats portray debt ceiling battles every time. Here's the White House press secretary saying Republicans want to "take the economy hostage!"
The rhetoric from the White House will continue to be absurd. The White House has said there will be no negotiation. But there will be a negotiation, and if a deal is to be had, we suggest the following trade:
If Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling, then Republicans should insist on scrapping the 87,000 IRS agents that were included in last summer's so-called "Inflation Reduction Act."
Here are 7 reasons why defunding the IRS component makes too much sense:
No Republican ever voted for it. The Inflation Reduction Act passed with no Republican support in either chamber. Raising the debt ceiling to pay for what was in the legislation means Republicans would own the legislation just the same as Democrats do. Republicans are under no obligation to fund programs they didn't vote for. Don't start now.
No one asked for it. What taxpayer was begging for the creation of a new IRS foot-soldier army? Anyone? The IRS expansion has no constituency clamoring for it, nor did it ever. No one is banging pots and pans to keep all these IRS agents. Republicans would be defunding a program that has no none to defend it, so...march on.
We can't afford it. The national debt has gone up $4 trillion in the last two years and now is a whopping $31 trillion. This is unsustainable. Keeping the program whole means we'd be raising the debt limit to pay for a program whose costs are raising the debt. And around and around and around we go. Hard pass.
Biden can't defend it. Members of Congress typically fear a President who can properly use his bully-pulpit to suck the oxygen out of the room. That was half the issue with Obamacare. Think what you will about how well Obama could deliver a message, but spineless Republicans back then feared him. Good luck to Democrats who want to rely on a guy who struggles to put complete sentences together. To those who might suggest Biden still has a bully pulpit - he's not Barack Obama and this isn't healthcare. It's tax collection and auditing.
Tax revenue is at record-breaking levels. Democrats need to stop saying people aren't 'paying their fair share.' There isn't a secret cabal of rich people running around not paying taxes. Stephen Moore noted at Fox News, "The government’s addiction to red ink isn’t due to insufficient tax collections. The Congressional Budget Office just reported this week that in 2022 the United States government raked in a record $4.9 trillion from Americans. As a share of our GDP that was very close to an all-time record high." In short, America doesn't even need the IRS to expand.
What was this country founded on again? America fought a revolution that began with a rebellion against tax collectors. Now we're going to use taxpayer money to make the tax-collection agency of the federal government one of the biggest agencies around? Negative, ghost rider.
Republicans ran on gutting it. So gut it. Somehow, through some legislative vehicle, it doesn't really matter which one...as NIKE says, JUST DO IT.
We're breaking tax collection revenue records nearly every year. It makes no sense to raise the debt limit in a vein attempt to collect even more.
Gut the IRS bill first.
