Washington,
D.C.–U.S.
Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee,
today voted against the Democrats’ mislabeled “Inflation Reduction Act,” a
partisan, filibuster-proof budget proposal that does nothing to bring the
economy out of stagnation and recession, and instead gives Americans higher
taxes, more spending, higher prices and an army of IRS agents.
“At
the beginning of this Congress, my Democrat colleagues used this same process
to ram through the ‘American Rescue Plan’ along party lines, with promises that
$1.9 trillion of debt-financed spending was going to save the country and fix
everyone’s concerns,” said Crapo. “Where are we today?
Inflation at 9.1 percent, which we told them was coming. Gas prices have
doubled. Economic stagnation. Semantic arguments about what defines
a recession, like the one Democrats are making, miss the point.
Sixty-five percent of Americans already think we are in a recession, and more
than eighty percent of the country say our economy is on the wrong track.
We should be working together on policies to bring us out of this economic
quagmire, but the bill we voted on today doubles down on a tried-and-failed
tax-and-spend strategy. This bill does nothing to address the significant
inflation we are facing, or to ease burdens born today by low- and
middle-income Americans. Rather, it promises higher taxes, more reckless
spending, higher prices, a supersized IRS and prolonged stagflation.
“Before
the pandemic, we were experiencing one of the strongest economies in a
lifetime. Employment was up, wages were up, capital formation came back
to the United States, and the inflation rate hovered around 1.5 percent.
We know pro-growth policies work, and I will continue to fight for them.”
As
Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Crapo spoke on the
Senate Floor against the Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spending spree, outlining
concerns with proposals to increase taxes on Americans across all
incomes. You can read those remarks here.
Senate
Republicans filed hundreds of amendments to blunt the worst provisions in the
legislation. As the lead Republican of the Senate Finance Committee,
Crapo offered several commonsense amendments to the Democrats’ social spending
spree, none of which were adopted. Crapo’s amendments included:
Prohibiting
the Use of Additional IRS Funding to Audit Taxpayers with Taxable Income Under
$400,000: Democrats’
bill included a massive $80 billion in unaccountable funding for the IRS, more
than half of which is dedicated to enforcement. This amendment
would have prevented the use of additional IRS funds from being used for audits
of taxpayers with incomes below $400,000 in order to protect low- and middle-income
earning American taxpayers from an onslaught of audits from an army of new IRS
auditors funded by an unprecedented, nearly $80 billion, infusion of new funds.
While Democrats chose to shirk their professed “intent” and misdirect with
stale rhetoric about “tax cheats” and “the rich,” none chose to vote for this
amendment which independent analysts have shown would protect middle-class
American workers and small businesses from increased taxes resulting from an
audit tsunami released by the Democrat-supersized IRS.
Protecting
Taxpayers from IRS Targeting for Political, Religious, or Ideological Beliefs: This amendment would
have prevented the use of additional IRS funds for audits of taxpayers with
incomes below $400,000, or targeting of taxpayers for political, religious, or
ideological beliefs.
Preventing
New IRS Systems to Monitor Taxpayers’ Bank Accounts: The Administration has proposed
allowing the IRS to monitor the transactions of deposits and withdrawals of
Americans who have more than $10,000 worth of transactions in a year—a
pernicious bank-reporting dragnet. While explicit language authorizing
the Democrats’ desire to snoop on Americans’ bank transactions was not included
in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, Crapo’s amendment would have
prevented the IRS from using funding to construct or operate a system for
providing information on and monitoring taxpayer flows of deposits or
withdrawals in taxpayers’ private accounts with financial institutions or
payment providers in order to protect taxpayer privacy.
Replacing
Bureaucratic Drug Price Controls with Solutions that Lower Costs while Ensuring
Access to Life-Saving New Treatments and Cures: This amendment would
have replaced the system of bureaucratic drug price controls that will lead to
higher launch prices, stifle growth, gut domestic manufacturing jobs and aid
foreign adversaries, like China, with Crapo’s Lower Costs, More Cures Act, legislation that would lower prescription drug
prices and encourage new treatments.
Protecting
Taxpayer Data and Preventing Data Leaks: This amendment would have provided for the use
of Internal Revenue Service funds to further privacy protections against leaks of private, legally protected taxpayer data outside of the Internal
Revenue Service, as we have seen with leaks of private, legally-protected
individual taxpayer data to the pro-tax media group ProPublica, and for
establishment of universal audit trails to track the utilization and access of
personal taxpayer data at the IRS to monitor who within and outside of the IRS
is looking at your personal tax information.
Redirect
$80 billion IRS Slush Fund to Shore Up Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund: Rather than provide an
unprecedented $80 billion infusion of taxpayer funds to the IRS, this amendment
would have repurposed the use of those taxpayer resources to help shore up the
nearly-exhausted Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund.