The IRS Budget would be cut by13 percent, or $1.4 billion, under an appropriations bill passed 228-195 in the House earlier this week. If enacted, this would mark a further decline in funding for the IRS, which received a $526 million budget cut as part of the fiscal year 2014 omnibus appropriations bill signed by the president Jan. 17.
House Republicans said the cuts were meant to send a message to the IRS and its commissioner, John Koskinen, to comply with investigations related to the 501(c)(4) scandal. “I think most people in this House would say that the IRS has betrayed the trust of the American people and they have got a long way to go before they restore the Americans' trust,” Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee Chairman Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.) said on the House floor shortly before the bill's passage July 16. Crenshaw called on the House to pass the bill and “rein in out of control spending” at the tax agency, sending the IRS “back to their core issues.”
Rep. Crenshaw, apparently, does not consider it a “core issue” for the IRS to have sufficient funds to answer telephone inquiries from those seeking to comply with the tax law or to have sufficient funds to properly train employees charged with answering the phones. House Republicans are seemingly in desperate need of adult supervision.
Cutting enforcement would reduce revenues by more than the savings from cutting the number of IRS people,” Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf told lawmakers at a House Budget Committee hearing July 16. “And if you devoted more resources to enforcement, you would reap extra revenues that would probably outweigh the costs of extra enforcement.”
The White House issued a veto threat July 14, in part, because of the provision restricting funds to implement the ACA. “Reverting the agency's funding level to FY 2008 levels would hinder IRS efforts to provide robust service to taxpayers, improve enforcement operations, and implement new statutory responsibilities,” it said. In addition, the spending bill would hurt deficit-reduction efforts by limiting IRS revenue collection functions and damage the agency's role in putting the Affordable Care Act in place, the statement said.
