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Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I so agree with my colleague from West Virginia and her comments about this budget.
Here it is. I would encourage our citizens to pick it up and give it a read and look at some of the things that they are going to find in here. I think they are going to be aghast at what they find in here-- $477,000 to the IRS for equity training so that they can put an emphasis on equity. These are just some of the porked-up things that you are going to find in this left-leaning, radical, unrealistic wish list of a budget that this administration has brought forward. It really is a blueprint to socialism. Let's put the government in charge of everything, your life from daylight to dark every time you are out and about. Let's have control over your gas stove, over your washing machine, over your showerhead, over your toilet flusher. That is what my colleagues on the left see. That is their goal--control over the people, governing by the elite for the elite. That is what they are all about. But I am going to drill down a little bit on this funding request for the Internal Revenue Service.
Now, President Biden is expecting the IRS to go to work, getting not just a few dollars but getting $4.7 trillion in new taxes. Imagine that. Tennesseans do not want to pay the government more of their hard- earned paycheck. They don't want to give it up to a government that is wasting that money because they realize it is our children and our grandchildren, our precious ones, who are going to have to pay the cost for this. It is compromising their futures on programs they don't want, with money we don't have.
Why are you seeing all these tax increases? You are seeing them because the spending is out of control--a $6.9 trillion budget; $4.7 trillion in new taxes; a budget that in year 1--year 1--the deficit for year 1 is $1.8 trillion. That is how far out of balance this budget is. That is why this thing is a wish list. It is a wish list of programs.
If you want to see how the left views the world, pick it up and give it a read. If you want to read in those words how little respect they have for the American people, for hard-working taxpayers, pick it up. They want your money.
Now, on the IRS, the IRS--in this fiscal year, 2024, they will increase their appropriations to $14.1 billion. That is a $1.8 billion increase from the 2023 enacted level. And we know that in the Inflation Reduction Act--what did the IRS get? Oh, $80 billion. How about that? So the IRS now is going to have $94.1 billion to spend.
Well, let's just ask the question: What do we think the IRS is going to use this money for? Do we think they are going to use it to make the Agency more user-friendly? Do we think they are going to use it to have people pick up the phone and say: Hi, I am your friendly IRS agent. How may I help you today?
We know that is pipe-dreaming. That is not what they are going to do.
Eighty billion dollars, plus a record $14.1 billion in an appropriation. They are going to use this money for what? More audits. Because why? President Biden wants $4.7 trillion--with a ``t,'' trillion--in new taxes.
Where do we think he is going to get this money? Oh, they like to say, it is going to come from corporations. It is going to come from extremely wealthy individuals and billionaires. But you know what, there is a problem with the math on that. The numbers just don't work. It doesn't add up.
Where are they going to get it? They are going to get it from small business manufacturers, from Main Street merchants, from the restaurants in your community. They are going to go get it from the manufacturing plant in your community. How about the HVAC contractor? How about the plumbing company? This is where they are going. Sound familiar? Of course it does because it is the middle- income earner who gets hit every single time. Every single time without fail, they are the ones who get hit by the tax increases the Democrats are wanting to push forward.
Now, we know the IRS is not going to make that Agency more friendly. We know it is not going to be there to protect you, the hard-working taxpayer. But we do know that what they will do is wallop you upside the head and say: You owe this money. We are going to audit you.
It is going to happen time and again.
On top of all of this, inflation is soaring. Grocery prices are up about 20 percent; gasoline prices, 45 percent; natural gas prices, 43 percent. Electricity prices have increased 24 percent, and clothing prices are up 12 percent. But in this budget, there is nothing addressing inflation. There is nothing that is going to bring inflation down.
There is not a lot of attention paid to crime in the streets or gangs who are coming across the border or the fact that the chief of the Border Patrol said today that they do not have--the United States does not have operational control of the border. There is not a cent there to build that wall, but there is money in there to pay for attorney fees for illegal immigrants.
It is the wrong set of priorities, not what the American people are wanting, certainly not what Tennesseans are wanting to see, and not the accountability and transparency the American people expect from their government.
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