On Monday, President Joe Biden slammed House Republicans’ tax agenda, focusing on the new majority’s push to eliminate new IRS funding, abolish the federal tax agency, and replace the income tax with a federal tax on consumption.
Biden referred to Republicans as “fiscally demented” during a speech at the National Action Network’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast in Washington, D.C., and promised to veto their tax legislation, which is almost certain to fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“Raise taxes on working families, worsening inflation,” he said. “Let me be clear: if any of these bills make it to my desk, they will be vetoed.”
The first bill, sponsored by Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., would rescind more than $70 million in new IRS spending approved last year as part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, including money to hire 87,000 new agents, which Republicans frequently criticise. The legislation was approved by the House on a party-line vote of 221-210.
Biden stated that he was “disappointed.” Smith’s legislation was the first bill voted on by the new Republican majority, and it was described as “helping wealthy people and big corporations cheat on their taxes at the expense of ordinary middle-class taxpayers.”
“We have a lot of new IRS agents because they fired a lot of them, a lot are retiring, and guess what? Who needs to know what serious agents are doing or not doing? “The billionaires, the multi-billionaires,” he said, noting that the bill would add $114 billion to the deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. “This is their initial bill. They ran a campaign against inflation. They didn’t say anything about making inflation worse if elected.”
Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., introduced a tax bill last week that would abolish the IRS, eliminate income taxes, and institute a federal consumption tax. The bill is also doomed in the Senate.
“Other than the obvious, what in God’s name is that all about?” Biden stated. “They want working-class people to pay an additional 10% to 20% of their taxes based on where they live and how they spend their money. And they’re going to cut taxes for the super-rich.”
