[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 143 (Wednesday, September 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4460-S4462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4798
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, last month, in a completely
partisan process, Senate Democrats pushed through their progressive and
deceivingly named Inflation Reduction Act. That bill was a disaster, as
it was full of reckless tax increases and spending.
Perhaps the worst part of it was that it authorized $80 billion in
new funding to the IRS--$80 billion. For reference, that is about the
same as what we allocated for Florida's entire State budget when I was
Governor, and Florida is the third largest State in the Nation. Even
though the IRS does a poor job with the resources it currently has, the
Democrats opted to supersize the IRS so they could fund 87,000 new IRS
agents, some of whom will be armed and willing to use deadly force to
carry out their duties.
So, while the Democrats are calling to defund the police and are
leaving our Border Patrol agents without the tools they need to secure
the southern border, they are happy to enlarge the IRS. We don't even
have 20,000 Border Patrol agents--a quarter of the number of new IRS
agents the Democrats want; yet they have now approved 87,000 additional
IRS agents. That is insane.
That many agents under the direction of President Biden should
concern every American. We all remember that when Joe Biden was Vice
President, the IRS went after conservative groups and Tea Party
organizations. Now, armed with tens of billions in new funding and tens
of thousands of new agents, what is stopping Joe Biden from directing
the IRS to go after groups he doesn't like? What about pregnancy
resource centers or Second Amendment groups?
Here is what the Democrats are doing: They are turning the IRS into a
super Agency to audit more Americans so they can fund even more of
their reckless tax-and-spend agenda. Let's not forget that last year,
the Democrats wanted the IRS to spy on nearly every American's bank
account and track one's everyday transactions. American families can
see straight through Biden's plans, and they are furious. We all should
be furious.
Without a single Republican vote, the Democrats authorized 87,000
more IRS agents--doubling the size of the Agency--all to pull as many
dollars as they can away from hard-working families and small
businesses so they can fund liberal projects and appease their radical
base with more government bailouts.
Case in point: Biden's illegal order to transfer student loan debt
from borrowers to taxpayers. Someone has to pay for the hundreds of
billions of dollars of debt that these borrowers voluntarily took on.
Now, instead of the borrowers paying for their own educations, that
burden is now borne by every American taxpayer. You didn't go to
college? The Democrats don't care. You will pay the debt of lawyers and
doctors. Have you already paid off your loans? Biden doesn't want to
hear it. Tough luck. Your taxes are the money pot for other people's
student debts, and if Democrats are going to keep declaring everything
to be free, Biden is going to need a lot more taxpayer money.
That, my fellow Americans, is how we get full circle back to the
supersized IRS. It is a vicious cycle to fund a radical, socialist
agenda. We have to stop it now.
I am here to do what countless Floridians have asked me to do--strike
this terrible policy from law. It is time to rein in the Federal
Government, and that work begins with putting a stop to Biden's IRS
army. My bill would simply repeal this disastrous IRS expansion, and I
ask all of my colleagues to support it.
Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent
that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4798. I
further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed
and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the
table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, it is
time for a reality check here in the Senate.
The far right has had an awful lot to say about the IRS in these last
few days. Even Senators who should supposedly know better are spinning
wild fantasy stories about 87,000 agents who are armed to the teeth and
coming to
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the doors of innocent small business people. All this talk is unscathed
by the truth.
Here is what is true: Every year, wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw
corporations skip out on paying what they owe and rip off the American
people for billions and billions of dollars. Let me say that again.
Wealthy tax cheats are ripping off innocent taxpayers, every year, of
billions and billions of dollars. They are sophisticated. They are
wealthy. They want to protect the status quo. By attacking the IRS, the
Republicans are helping high-flying tax cheats get away with breaking
the law.
The IRS has had its resources gutted by the Republicans over the last
decade. It is badly outmatched now by the wealthy tax cheats, who have
armies of lawyers and accountants who are prying open loopholes and
hiding income in the shadows. Let me give the Senate an example.
A few weeks ago, I put out the findings of a yearlong Finance
Committee investigation into the largest alleged tax evasion scheme by
one individual in American history. With the right financial wizardry
and a complicated network of offshore accounts and partnerships, this
individual, Robert Brockman, was able to evade taxes on over $2 billion
in income. To hide his money, he set up offshore entities that we call
shell banks. They were offshore entities dressed up like financial
institutions that Mr. Brockman set up to hide his money from the IRS,
betting correctly that the IRS wouldn't have the resources to uncover
his scheme. There may be hundreds of thousands more of these shell
banks that the IRS has never examined.
The Finance Committee is also in the midst of an investigation into
the tax practices of some of the biggest members of Big Pharma. One of
the companies whose tax data we examined was AbbVie. In 2020, 75
percent of AbbVie's sales were made in the United States, but AbbVie
reported only 1 percent of its income to the United States for tax
purposes. Earlier this year, we requested financial information from
Merck, which makes nearly half of its sales in the United States, but
it reported only 14 percent of its income here. We also requested
information from Bristol Myers Squibb, which reportedly used a thicket
of foreign subsidiaries and partnerships to take its effective tax rate
from 24.7 percent all the way down to a negative 7 percent in a single
year.
The IRS struggles to do anything about many of these cases even when
they get reported in the press. Criminal tax evasion cases have fallen
nearly by half. The number of highly trained experts who know how to
break down these complex tax evasion cases has fallen by a third. It
takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to review the tax filings of
corporations and the rich, and the IRS just doesn't have the resources
to go after these wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations. So
there is a reason the Democrats believe you have to invest more
resources to enforce the laws on the books.
Here is the most important point: It doesn't have anything to do with
middle-class taxpayers, because their taxes are taken out automatically
of every single paycheck. That is really different than the way the big
guys go about their activities in ripping off the little guys with
complex tax evasion schemes. What so many Republicans want to do is
preserve the status quo so that only the little guys get audited while
billionaire friends like Robert Brockman get off scot-free.
Funding for the IRS is also about providing a basic level of customer
service to taxpayers who are in Colorado, in Oregon, and in every part
of the country. At one point during the filing season this year, the
IRS told the Finance Committee that it was able to answer only 11
percent of the service phone calls it was receiving. Taxpayers in
America deserve better service from their government, and that means
making sure the IRS has the resources to provide it.
The far right and the tax cheats--the wealthy tax cheats--want the
IRS, apparently, to continue to struggle because it makes it easier to
attack and vilify. That is why we have heard so many falsehoods about
the thousands of new IRS agents. I don't know where this number came
from. It is absolute nonsense that has been conjured out of nothing.
Even worse are the falsehoods about IRS agents and firearms.
Alongside the DEA, the FBI, and other law enforcement Agencies, the IRS
often plays a part in going after drug cartels, money launderers, and
other serious, hardened criminals. So the question is, How do my
Republican colleagues expect IRS criminal investigation officers to
defend themselves during drug busts against violent cartels? Should
they bring a set of sharpened No. 2 pencils?
We are talking about living in the real world. The IRS funding that
the Democrats passed last month is about making sure that the IRS can
do its job and meet the expectations of the American people.
I can tell you, as a Senator who has townhall meetings in every
county of my State every year, the people of my State say: Look, we are
law-abiding. We pay our taxes. There is something way out of whack when
these wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations can pay little or
nothing.
It is time for Members of Congress to stop going to bat for these
wealthy tax cheats who break the law. The IRS needs to be able to crack
down on these rip-offs. The IRS needs to be able to provide adequate
and timely service. The taxpayers need help, and that is what the IRS
funding does.
What we have heard so much about from my colleagues on the far right
in raising this specter of agents--thousands of them, armed to the
teeth, coming to the doors of small businesses--is simply unscathed by
the truth.
For that reason, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I agree with my colleague that
if you owe taxes, you should pay your taxes, but what is inconsistent
with what my colleague just said is that we had an amendment vote that
would say that none of these agents could go after anybody making less
than $400,000 a year. Every Democrat, I believe, in the Senate voted
against that. So the goal is, absolutely, we should make sure that
wealthy taxpayers pay everything they owe, but we had an amendment that
would make sure this was focused on wealthy taxpayers--this was during
a vote just before we left on recess--and every Democrat voted against
that.
For all of those who are watching, here is what you are going to see:
The Democratic Party has created a platform to audit more Americans--
not just wealthy Americans but all Americans. This isn't about
fairness; this is about power. The Democrats want to spy on your bank
transactions, and they want to send 87,000 more IRS agents on the
streets to collect the bill for their reckless spending.
Joe Biden has pitched his provision in the image of Robin Hood taking
from the rich, but in reality, this expansion is in the image of the
Sheriff of Nottingham stealing from the poor and the working class.
None of us should be surprised the Democrats are doubling down on the
radical IRS expansion policies. We all should be pretty mad. When the
Republicans take control of Congress in January, you can expect that we
will do everything in our power to repeal this terrible policy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would just like to briefly discuss the
amendment that came up during the budget discussion.
Senate Democrats made it very, very clear that we were strongly
against taxing those in our country with incomes under $400,000. The
problem with the amendment that the Republicans offered is they used
the word ``taxable'' income. So, while we strongly opposed raising
taxes on middle-class people and others making under $400,000, the
wording of the Republicans' amendment, which talked about taxable
income, could have immunized billionaires from being subject to an
audit. That is because, as the Presiding Officer and I have talked
about, billionaires often live by this ``buy, borrow, and die''
philosophy, and they have little or no taxable income for years on end.
My colleagues probably saw some of the stories, for example, about
billionaires who are claiming the child tax credit because their
taxable income
[[Page S4462]]
is actually low under the way it is defined.
Just to make sure the record is clear, we are all in on this effort
of not taxing middle-income folks. We subscribe completely. In fact, it
is what we had in the bill, and our enforcement section made that clear
as well. But we are not for creating new paths to tax evasion for
billionaires. Regrettably, that is what the language in the
Republicans' amendment would have done.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. The easiest way to solve my colleague's issue
would have been to propose an amendment to make sure that we didn't go
after taxpayers making less than $400,000 a year, but not one Democrat
did that. All they did was just vote against this and then after the
fact say: Well, it was a language issue. If it were simply a language
issue, we could have solved it that night.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.