CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans criticized Republicans for the amount of money the potential budget deal allotted to the IRS on Tuesday. The proposed plan included $60 billion for the IRS as opposed to the $80 billion that Democrats favored. Romans portrayed Republicans as opposed to the public good because they didn’t want to increase the bureaucracy’s budget. She failed to explain the IRS’s history of targeting conservative organizations and the benefits of $20 billion in savings.
Romans lamented: “In the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ which is a piece of legislation that a lot of Republicans despise, there was $80 billion for important modernization and hiring new--new workers at the IRS because—because of a lot of retirements and age demographics, they just didn’t have enough people.”
Romans continued: “We had really long waits to get your, your taxes processed, and long lines on the phone. They wanted to fix that. Now, they are going to roll back some of that money, $1.4 billion right away, and then $10 billion next year, and $10 billion the year after that. That is something that the Republicans really want to see.”
Ironically, Romans acknowledged that the updates to the IRS would still be possible with without the additional $20 million in spending. “Now, the White House is saying it is still going to be able to modernize the IRS and still be able to enforce taxes, enforce tax cheats,” she said. Thus, the IRS would still be effectively updated, leading one to wonder if the $20 billion spending reduction could indeed be seen as savings instead of an intentional move to undermine the agency.
“The right wing conspiracy is that there was an army of armed agents going to come after every day Americans, trying to get your money. That’s not what any of that is for,” Romans said, omitting how the IRS targeted Tea Party organizations during the Obama administration and the subsequent legal settlement.
“It is to enforce high net worth tax cheats, right? So every dollar at the IRS is going to bring even more revenue. So that’s the funny part of this, if you really are serious about debt and deficits, you really want the IRS to be able to do its job,” Romans scoffed.
However, during a congressional impeachment hearing in 2016, then-IRS Commissioner John Koskinen admitted that the IRS intentionally and politically targeted conservative groups. “They were totally improper criteria used to select organizations applying for c-4 designation for further review. Those organizations predominantly were conservative organizations,” he confessed.
Romans implied that Republicans must not be serious about debt and deficits because they want to give the IRS, a federal agency that has already been used against conservatives, $60 billion instead of $80 billion.
Once again, CNN portrayed one-sided news coverage by ignoring the legitimate concerns of Republicans and history of the IRS.
CNN's anti-Republican reporting was made possible by Tide.
CNN’s News Central
5/30/2023
9:38 a.m. Eastern
JOHN BERMAN: Look, the markets never truly believed--
CHRISTINE ROMANS: Exactly.
BERMAN: --that the, you know, that the economy is going to default.
ROMANS: Exactly.
BERMAN: But what are you hearing from investors this morning?
ROMANS: What I'm hearing is there is a gauntlet of procedure, politics, and votes before this is finally done, and there’s not a lot of time. So, I think markets, investors are reserving a little bit of judgment here. And you’re right. If you look at markets this year, they’re mostly up. The Dow flat on the year. With all the recession watch, a Dow that is flat, the S&P 500 is up almost 10 percent and the NASDAQ whose tech stocks have been going gangbusters.
So, you’ve got stock investors who’ve already had a pretty good first half of the year here, even with all of these headwinds like politics in Washington, recession fears, has the Fed gone too far, has the Fed not gone far enough? So, it’s a very odd and quirky economy right now. And for investors to have made money in the first half of the year, I think, is kind of remarkable.
BERMAN: It may not be a huge bounce even if this bill gets signed into law--
ROMANS: No, exactly.
BERMAN: -- ‘Cause there wasn’t a big drop in advance of the discussions.
ROMANS: Right, exactly.
BERMAN: All right. Part of this deal is to pare down funding for the IRS. The IRS was supposed to get what, like $80 billion?
ROMANS: Yes.
BERMAN: And, now, they will get $60.
ROMANS: That's right.
BERMAN: How significant is that $20 billion?
ROMANS: So, let me rewind a little bit. In the "Inflation Reduction Act" ,which is a piece of legislation that a lot of Republicans despise, there was $80 billion for important modernization and hiring new--new workers at the IRS because—because of a lot of retirements and age demographics, they just didn’t have enough people.
We had really long waits to get your, your taxes processed, and long lines on the phone. They wanted to fix that. Now, they are going to roll back some of that money, $1.4 billion right away, and then $10 billion next year, and 10 billion the year after that. That is something that the Republicans really want to see.
Now, the White House is saying it is still going to be able to modernize the IRS and still be able to enforce taxes, enforce tax cheats. And look, a lot of the money on the – the right wing conspiracy is that there was an army of armed agents going to come after everyday Americans, trying to get your money. That’s not what any of that is for. It is to enforce high net worth tax cheats, right? So every dollar at the IRS is going to bring even more revenue. So that’s the funny part of this, if you really are serious about debt and deficits, you really want the IRS to be able to do its job.
BERMAN: Right, the $80 billion was actually going to reduce--
ROMANS: Exactly.
BERMAN: --the debt, so says the CBO.
ROMANS: Exactly. So we'll watch this space.
BERMAN: And again, no one had told the IRS how and when it had to spend that money exactly.
ROMANS: Right.
BERMAN: So, it may be that that 20 billion isn't felt for some time.
ROMANS: And the wait times are down. So the money that they have deployed so far, wait times at the IRS are down, and that’s something that helps all taxpayers.
