The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration agreed to audit IRS employees who are either behind on their taxes or haven't paid them in full, and that's "great news," Sen. Joni Ernst, who has been pushing for the review, said on Newsmax, Thursday.
"A recent IG report noted that 1,250 IRS personnel had not paid their taxes or they were delinquent, or they had not paid in full," the Iowa Republican told Newsmax's "Wake Up America," adding that about 300 or so of these employees are "repeat offenders."
"These are the people that enforce Americans and the tax laws and are making hardworking Americans pay their taxes, and yet they're not doing it themselves," Ernst said. "We are very excited to announce that the IG has stated that he will do an audit of the IRS and their employees."
Ernst argued in a speech on the Senate Floor on Wednesday that businesses are struggling with worker shortages at a time the IRS plans to hire thousands of new agents through a provision in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.
On Newsmax, Ernst ridiculed President Joe Biden's claims that the new agents won't target people who make less than $400,000 a year.
"It's laughable to think that you would hire 87,000 additional agents on top of the already 80,000 that are at the IRS and believe that they are not going to go after hardworking Americans," said Ernst. "Now president Joe Biden had stated that no one earning under $400,000 a year would be audited. Oh, come on, Joe. We know that's not true, because in order to pay for all of these agents, they'll have to go after a lot of low-hanging fruit."
Ernst also called it inappropriate for IRS agents to be armed, as reports have indicated, and called on the government to increase its hiring to send "maybe 87,000 more CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] on our southern border, or maybe some more personnel to work for the VA to undo the backlog of veterans' claims.
"There are so many things we could be doing in our federal government that make sense," Ernst said. "This does not make sense."
In other matters, Ernst slammed the White House for having a celebration earlier this week over inflation numbers that dropped slightly, as Americans are still hurting.
"This is caused by their policies," she said."It was poor, poor form for the president and those Democrats to be celebrating while Americans are taking on second jobs to make ends meet."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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