Daily Archives: July 31, 2022

If you think that Democrats tax-and-spending bill wouldnt expand government, have I got news for you. Believe it or not, the Build Back Better legislation would more than double the size of the IRS.

Thats one of the hidden details in the agreement that Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., cut with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., behind closed doors. And of course, Democrats want to ram it through Congress within a matter of days. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., once said about another big-government scheme, we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.

The draft bill contains an $80 billion investment in the Internal Revenue Service. Of that amount, more than half, or over $45.6 billion, will go towards enforcement activities.

Even as it doles out such vast sums for the IRS, the bill contains only a few short pages of text explaining the provisions. In other words, the IRS will have a relatively wide berth to spend the new funding as it likes.

But last May, the Treasury Department released its tax compliance agenda, showing where it would like to spend that money. And on page 17 of that document, it helpfully included a chart demonstrating the IRS agents it would hire with that additional cash. All told, the Biden Administration wants to hire 86,852 agents, expressed in this chart as FTEs, or full-time equivalent employees:

By comparison, the most recent version of the IRS Data Book shows that in the fiscal year that ended last September 30, the agency had a total of 78,661 full-time equivalent employees. (See Table 32 on page 87 here.) In other words, hiring an additional 86,852 agents would more than double the size of the IRS.

Language on page 39 of the bill states that nothing in this subsectionthat is, the portion of the bill appropriating the $80 billion for the IRSis intended to increase taxes on any taxpayer with a taxable income below $400,000. A one-page fact sheet summarizing the tax provisions makes the same claim.

But, as previously noted, the Biden Administration intends to use the funding in the bill to hire over 86,000 new employees. Does anyone really believe that more than doubling the IRS the same agency that spent years harassing conservative groups, and still hasnt explained the public leak of confidential tax return information to the liberal website ProPublica means that all those new employees will exclusively focus on the rich, and wont spend some or all of their time targeting middle-class and working Americans?

Admittedly, the Treasury Department claimed in its compliance agenda last May that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for those with less than $400,000 in actual income. But the bill itself includes no statutory prohibition on the IRS harassing middle-class taxpayers. It merely says the bill intends not to increase their tax burden. It doesnt prohibit the legislation from having that effect in practice, and it doesnt prohibit the IRS from burying struggling families in a mountain of new audits and paperwork.

All this focus on IRS enforcement comes with a profound irony: Many tax experts, including one from the liberal Tax Policy Center, believe that Joe Biden himself cheated on his 2017 and 2018 taxes, paying himself an absurdly low salary (while using a loophole that his Administration now wants to close) to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicare and Obamacare taxes.

In what will come as a shock to absolutely no one who understands how Washington works, the Democrats who claim to support giving more power to the IRS to audit the rich have said precious little about Bidens tax shenanigans. Of course, if they really believed in the accountability they claim to support, they would be sending letters to the IRS demanding that the Service audit Bidens 2017 and 2018 returns.

Instead, the principle of audits for thee, but not for me rules the Democratic roost. All of which suggests that the 86,852 new IRS agents the Biden Administration wants to hire will end up making life miserable not for the rich, but for ordinary Americans, for years to come.

Mr. Jacobs is Founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group and the author of the book The Case Against Single Payer. He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.

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'Build Back Better' Bill Would Double IRS Agent Army By 86000 - The Federalist

One day after the U.S. officially entered a recession, something the White House has repeatedly denied, the partisan cheerleaders at Politico shamelessly declared that Joe Biden is back in the game.

After enduring a brutal year, Biden is suddenly on the verge of a turnaround that, the White House believes, could salvage his summer and alter the trajectory of his presidency, Politico authors Adam Cancryn, Jonathan Lemire, and Christopher Cadelago wrote.

Despite Politicos insistence that the tides are turning for the commander in chief, President Biden was never in the game. Unless, of course, the game was hurting Americans, their liberties, and their pocketbooks from day one.

Even Politicos tone-deaf puff piece admits that Bidens term is tainted by economic angst, legislative setbacks and sinking approval ratings, which the corporate media outlet pegged at just 37 percent this week. Thats in addition to a growing border crisis, disastrous foreign policy including the fatal Afghanistan withdrawal, rampant inflation, a formula shortage, forced Covid-19 jabs, abortion radicalism that contradicts most Americans feelings about life in the womb, energy dependence, a war on parents concerned about indoctrination in schools, and a shady family business thats under federal investigation.

Nothing marks success like an administration marred with endless catastrophes, right?

That doesnt seem to matter to Politico, however, which argued thatthe reconciliationbill agreed upon by DemocratSens. Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer on Wednesday could be the saving grace for Biden and his party. This expensive legislation will only exacerbate inflation and aggravate voters already frustrated with rapidly rising costs, yet Politico hailed it as the agreement the White House needed to play a more significant role in convincing a handful of remaining Democrats to take the victory thats in front of them.

How convenient to suggest that mere months before the upcoming midterms, Biden can magically save the Democrats national agenda from the ashes of his failed administration.

Polling says Americans arent buying what the Always Be Closing president and his cronies in the corrupt press are selling. According to the latest AP-NORC survey, 85 percent of American adults think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Even 78 percent of Democrats, Bidens base, say they are dissatisfied with the direction of the nation.

Biden is a benchwarmer who will be the face of the regime until he isnt useful for the Democrats and the corporate media who installed him anymore. For now, Biden is protected by media lapdogs such as Politico and the promise of a legislative deal.

But he was never in the game and after one and a half years of catastrophes at home and abroad including a recession, its safe to say he wont get into it anytime soon.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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No, Politico, Joe Biden Was Never In The Game - The Federalist

In preparation for the close of the years second economic quarter, the White House Council of Economic Advisers has already started the spin: Were not in a recession if we just redefine what a recession is.

While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle, the supposedly nonpartisan group said in a blog post on Thursday.

Its doubtful the verbal smoke and mirrors will persuade the average Americans whose grocery bills keep growing as fast as their gas tanks empty. A recession is a sustained downturn in economic activity, and many Americans can feel it without knowing what the Q2 numbers are. But its far from the first concept the left has simply redefined to deflect the consequences of their failed policies and ideas.

One of their favorite words to redefine, apparently as full and unchallenged political control, is democracy. When actual democratic processes are at work such as when an elected majority votes not to pass a pet piece of legislation, or when issues such as abortion law are left to elected representatives of the people at the state level leftists scream their favorite catchphrase and call it a threat to democracy. Theyve levied that smear at everything from our bicameral legislature to the Supreme Court to the other party in our two-party system. Its obvious theyre not really talking about democracy in any honest sense of the word. When democracy is a threat to their power, it simply gets redefined.

Another word thats undergone a 180-degree redefinition is racism. No longer is it considered racist to treat someone differently based on his or her skin color, and not racist to value all human beings equally. Instead, if youre not promoting theories that remedy past discrimination [with] present discrimination, as critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi suggests, you are clearly a racist according to the lefts new dictionary. Do you believe in meritocracy? Racist. Think people are responsible for their own choices, and its neither possible nor beneficial for the government to dole out equivalent outcomes to everyone by force? Doubly racist. The new liturgy says that true equality lies in teaching some children that theyre part of a hopelessly oppressive system and other children that theyre hopelessly oppressed.

On the subject of pitting people against each other, the term vaccine has been ridiculously redefined to cover for the incompetence of the people who profit from them. After the shot that was promised to protect people from Covid transmission and infection failed to ward off either, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention simply changed the definition of vaccine to fit the narrative. A product that stimulates a persons immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease was quietly altered to a preparation that is used to stimulate the bodys immune response against diseases. Barely a week later, Merriam-Webster followed suit by changing the definition of anti-vaxxer from someone who opposes vaccines to someone who doesnt believe the government should mandate Covid shots.

Just last week, as part of the trans-crazed campaign to redefine what a woman is, Merriam-Webster added having a gender identity that is the opposite of male to its definition of female. Categories such as men and women that are based in biological reality dont suit the agenda that seeks to abolish those realities from minds and bodies. So rather than advocate their agenda within the bounds of reality, the left simply attempts to redefine reality itself. Its apparent in the push to call women by the objectifying terms pregnant persons, menstruating people, etc. We saw it when then-Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson told Congress she couldnt define what a woman is, and its obvious in the attempts to put confused men in womens prisons, shelters, and bathrooms. The reality of womanhood is in the way, so its being redefined out of existence.

And while abortion advocates lately have been willing to defend the act of killing a baby in the womb even with the understanding that it takes a human life, for years theyve pushed their agenda by redefining an unborn baby as a clump of cells or some other dehumanizing description.

On any of those topics and more, leftists and their allies in Big Tech also persistently redefine any dissenting opinions or perspectives as disinformation, using that disingenuous label to erase opposition from channels of discourse.

Of course, many people who hear them prattle about disinformation, birthing persons, anti-racism, threats to democracy, and their host of other buzzwords know those words are nonsense. We can tell, as George Orwell wrote in 1946, that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

But, as he noted, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them. The danger is in allowing these redefinitions of reality to be said, unchallenged, until enough people forget they could ever be challenged at all.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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The Left's Response To Failure Is To Redefine It As Success - The Federalist

Nothing captures just how bizarre and unearthly Democrats have become than when they get to talking about police and law enforcement. (Their fixation with gender bending is a close second.)

It would honestly do them a lot of good to just stop discussing the issue altogether. You can see it on their faces how hard it is to articulate simple concepts like, criminals should be in jail, or, police deserve respect.

They would rather complicate the issue by talking about the history of slavery, disadvantaged communities, and my favorite systemic oppression.

All the data show that across the board, regardless of race, the overwhelming majority of police and civilian interactions are fine; that minorities call on cops for help at a far higher rate than whites; and that the chance of an unarmed black man being killed by police is next to nonexistent (and when such an incident does occur, its because he was resisting arrest or attempting to flee in a life-threatening, high-speed chase).

But liberals refuse to leave it alone, instead writhing in pain as they try to find some existential problem with our law enforcement.

To wit, New York Times columnist-in-training Charles Blow wrote Wednesday that former president Trump and his voters arent genuine supporters of the policeokay, whatever you say. But Blow couldnt make the point without first offering a winding, tedious lecture on the theory of policing.

In a system of accountability and consequences, there must be first points of contact, people who are charged with preventing and stopping the rule breaking, he prattled. In our society, those people are police officers. Their role, in the abstract, is essential. However, the way that we have constructed it is problematic.

Recall Missouri Democrat Rep. Cori Bush, a champion of zeroing out police budgets, last year attempting to explain why she spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on private, armed security. I have private security because my body is worth being on this planet right now, she said, somehow, without laughing. I have private security because they, the white supremacist, racist narrative that they drive into this country the fact that they dont care that this black woman that has put her life on the line they cant match my energy, first of all. This black woman who puts her life on the line. They dont care that I could be taken out of here. They actually are probably okay with that. But this is the thing, I wont let them get that off. You cant get that off.

That is a direct transcript of what she said on national television.

Listening to Democrats talk about law enforcement is like watching that In Living Color skit with the Oswald Bates character, a prisoner who confidently uses a slew of multisyllabic words that ultimately mean nothing, but he thinks hes smart for using them anyway. (First of all, we must internalize the flatulation of the matter by transmitting the effervescent of the Indonesian proximity in order to further segregate the crux of my venereal infection.)

Free tip for Democrats: Really just shut up. Youve turned all of our big cities into war zones where theft and vandalism continue with impunity in no small part because a fentanyl addict died in a freak accident. No matter how you cut it, no matter how complicated you try to make it, law enforcement is not your issue and youre scaring everyone.

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The Creepy Weirdness Of Democrats Is Best Understood When They Talk About Law Enforcement - The Federalist

Now that anonymous sources are leaking to The Washington Post that the Department of Justice is officially targeting former President Donald Trump with criminal charges, this is a good time to ask: Just how crazy are the occupants of Washington, D.C.? Do they really think they will indict, prosecute, convict, and imprison the Republican frontrunner for president in 2024 without creating a massive amount of public backlash?

For half the country, trying to take down Trump for giving a speech over a mile away from the Capitol on Jan. 6 while hardly anybody has been held accountable for the atrocious Russia collusion hoax that nearly destroyed his presidency will be nothing less than total confirmation of a two-tiered and irreparably corrupt justice system and could permanently tear the nation in two.

This may come as a shocker to Washington, but Congresss J6 obsession is not high on Americans list of critical issues. Polls show the American peoples top concerns are skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty, not what happened on Jan. 6. To say that the American government and the American people are not speaking the same language right now is an understatement.

Had Attorney General Merrick Garland felt that Trump had potentially committed a crime before leaving office, he should have pursued an investigation free from the overtly political atmosphere created by Congresss J6 committee hearings. Whatever Nancy Pelosis Jan. 6 Committee is, it has not been a courtroom pursuing justice. Though witnesses are brought before the committee to confess, as Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., so Stalin-esquely put it, there is no one cross-examining their testimony for truth or accuracy.

While one side presents a damning case against anyone who even thought about attending rallies near the Capitol that day, there is no defense counsel to challenge evidence, offer competing explanations, or provide mitigating circumstances on the accuseds behalf. No one is present to contest the committees allegations at all. Third-party hearsay evidence, normally inadmissible in courts of law, is used to advance the committees narratives. For that matter, long-winded and rhetorical political speeches from admittedly biased committee members advance theories of the case not grounded in evidence at all. Exculpatory evidence that might call into question the committees grave charges is regularly excluded.

Still, the whole proceeding is conducted with such an air of legal seriousness that an ordinary observer could be excused for mistaking it as a place for justice. It is difficult to watch a spectacle such as this one in America, a nation that has generally managed to avoid the kind of theatrical show trials we normally associate with Soviet Russias Iron Curtain days. Yet here we are. The end result is that the Jan. 6 Committee has permanently destroyed any veneer of objectivity and effectively tainted any potential jury pool by flooding primetime television viewing audiences with misinformation and salacious gossip.

While Pelosi, Garland, and President Joe Biden all insist that J6 investigations into Trump are serious legal matters, the nearly two-year public spectacle is so over-the-top that it is difficult not to conclude that the J6 committees principal concern is keeping Trump from running for president again in 2024. Rep. Cheney has gone so far as to explicitly make this point by asserting that he must never again be anywhere close to the Oval Office. In a nation with democratic elections, that would presumably be a decision for the voters to make.

Cheney and her colleagues, however, either fear that the American people will make the wrong choice, or they dont really believe in the value of democratic elections as much as they claim. Either way, the J6 Commissions efforts to turn President Trump into a criminal target for the Justice Department seem like a cynical bureaucratic workaround for depriving the people of their chance to decide Trumps fitness for office on their own.

Should Congresss J6 committee hearings not succeed in keeping Trump off the 2024 ballot, they may ironically be seen years from now as having done much to help Trump get reelected. Its interesting to go back in time to the fall of 2015 when the Republican primaries were still months away and Republican voters had a veritable all-star class of candidates from whom to choose. According to an Associated Press-GfK poll at the time, an overwhelming 77 percent of Republican voters preferred an outsider candidate who will change how things are done, rather than someone with experience in Washington who can get things done. Republicans were so committed to choosing an outsider that their top two choices for the White House according to the poll were Ben Carson and Donald Trump.

Although political pundits expected primary voters to change their minds as the 2016 state contests arrived, Republicans desire for an outsider not only clinched Trumps nomination but also assured his general election victory. Nothing about the electorates mood today suggests that Republican voters are eager to return to mainstream establishment political candidates.

Washingtons vast Never Trump coalition would have been most successful in tanking Trumps political chances in either 2020 or 2024 had they found a way to embrace him as one of their own, force him to compromise his goals and betray his promises, and leave Americans with the impression that Trump had played voters seeking an outsider as fools. Instead, nonstop attacks from D.C.s permanent bureaucracy have been the hallmarks of the Trump presidency.

From the Russia collusion hoax, the two-year Mueller inquisition, two congressional impeachments, countless administration betrayals, and now two additional years of J6 investigations intent on seeking his prosecution and conviction, it is unmistakably clear that Trump is just as much an outsider today as he was before his first victory. And should voters appetites for an outsider candidacy remain as high as they were in 2016, then nobody will have greater tried and true credibility than Trump.

J.B. Shurk is a freedom-minded, anti-establishment, sometimes unorthodox, committed generalist and a proud American from Daniel Boone country.

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Is The J6 Committee Trying To Get Trump Re-Elected? - The Federalist

Abortion proponents have embraced a drastic shift in messaging over the past few decades. In the 1990s, Bill Clintons safe, legal, and rarewasthe standard line which isa far cry fromtodays well-traveled maxims like Free Abortion on Demand Without Apology and Shout Your Abortion. Indeed, in the heart of abortions most ardent base, the strategy entails encouraging pride over shame and celebration over regret. But does this shift reflect the experiences of those who are disinclined to shout their abortions?

Theresan accusation lurking in the subtext of the abortion debate over abortion regret, implying that no woman should feel bad terminating a pregnancy if it was never suggested that abortion itself is bad. How paternalistic. First, Big Abortion sells women short by suggesting they will never be able to handle both a career and a family, and then they sell them an abortion. And now, abortion zealots make themselves the masters of how women must feel about it.

The pro-life movement at large has consistently perceived two victims in an abortion scenario a child whose life is on the line, and a mother who is vulnerable toan industry that profits from violence and deceit. Those sellingabortionmust sever the one-of-a-kind physical relationship between mother and gestating child through abortion lethal pregnancy violence that will be painfully understood by a mother when she finds herself empty of life.

Widespread abortion regret issupported by data, yet seldom reported.Thephysical and psychologicalrisks of abortion are well known to those of us who support post-abortive women.New studieshave shown that women who have abortions are 81 percent more likely to experiencesubsequentmental health problems. This includes being110 percentmore likely to abuse alcohol and 115 percent more likely to develop suicidal behavior following abortion. Another study notes women who ended their first pregnancy by abortion arefive times more likelyto reportsubsequentsubstance abuse than women who carried the pregnancy to term and four times more likely to report substance abuse compared to those whose first pregnancy ended naturally.

But the bestsource for understanding abortion regret is the women who have experienced it firsthand.Consider an entire legionof both men and women who were traumatized by abortion yet feel unwelcome in the Shout Your Abortion era.

For every handful of celebrities shouting their abortions,theresone who courageously goes against the abortion-loving mob to tell a different truth. In 2015, Nicki Minajsaid in an interviewthat her high school abortion has haunted her all her life. Eminems 2017 song Riverputson full display his abortion regret as a father. In 2020, Kanye Westbroke down in publicwhile explaining how much pain he suffers for even considering aborting his daughter, North, as well as his wrestling with the knowledge that he himself was almost aborted.

From our own work at Students for Life of AmericasStanding with You program. We know that women struggle for years to grapple with the loss of their child through abortion or the fallout of abortion fathers and families experience. Healing ministries likeProject Rachel,Rachels Vineyard, andSupport After Abortion exist to offer loving care to those experiencing grief.

But the second flaw in the argument against the realities of abortion regret is in who is making it.Consider that those encouraging the celebration of abortion are also in the abortion business. This is further evidenced by the fact that a disproportionate number ofabortionresearchers are funded by pro-abortion entities.

If, for example, the everyone loves abortion research comes from the Bixby Centerat the University of California(asitoften does),itshighly relevant that the Center is funded and organized to find in favor of abortion.The Bixby Centertrains abortionists through itsRyan Residency Training Programand is funded by population control-loving Warren Buffett, along with Planned Parenthood and their Guttmacher Institute andGynuity Health Projects, which profits from chemical abortion sales and so on.The Bixby Center is as unbiased on abortion as The Tobacco Instituteis on cigarettes.

Even worse than the clear and present bias in abortion data is the audacity of those blaming pro-lifers for abortion regret to cite TheTurnawayStudy, which isfamously so flawedthat a Planned Parenthood exec could drive their Lamborghini through the holes in its reasoning.

The studywas published in 2015 by the abortion group ANSIRH and, in simplest terms, is an attempt to dismiss the trauma and long-standing pain many women feel following an abortion. It tries to conclude that women are hurt by being denied an abortion, but as explored at lengthby Live Action,Turnawayhas four glaring problems: a bad study sample, no true control group, a lackluster assessment of physical health, and misleading questions.

The study tracks only a small number of women fewer than 200 who were denied abortions. Additionally, the results were only presented at an academic conference. This data has not appeared in an academic journal nor gone through the peer-review process. Finally, the study and the full results do not appear to be publicly available. Thus, despite shamefully poor research practices and an utter failure to prove the claim it set out to, that womendontregret abortion,itsstill propped up Weekend at Bernies style by abortion proponents.

Furthermore, these women were denied abortions not because of legal restrictions, but because many facilities do not carry out late-term abortions.

Itsfascinating that a movement once sold as pro-choice refuses to allow women the freedom to feel loss after receiving an abortion.Every parent who made an abortion decision, from the main streets of pro-life communities to the pro-abortion hills of Hollywood, deserves the freedom to be honest about their experience. And for those who want to process those feelings, the pro-life community is heretohelp.

Working mother Brenna Lewis is a staff writer with Students for Life of America.

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Pro-Abortion Crowd Silences Women Who Regret Them - The Federalist