More Evidence that the House GOP Isn’t Interested in Decreasing the Deficit

In addition to insisting that millionaires and corporations can’t be asked to contribute one penny to deficit reduction, and passing a budget that calls for spending trillions of dollars to give additional tax breaks to millionaires and corporations, the House GOP proposes to increase the deficit by easing up on tax cheats.

In testimony to the Senate last week supporting the Internal Revenue Service’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2012, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson likened the IRS to the Accounts Receivable Department of the federal government. If the government were a private company, its management would fund the Accounts Receivable Department at whatever level it believed would maximize the company’s bottom line. The public sector analogue should be to maximize tax compliance, she said, with due regard for protecting taxpayer rights and minimizing the burden on taxpayers. She pointed out that increasing the IRS budget is an excellent financial investment – in fact, she said, every $1 appropriated for the IRS in FY 2010 produced about $194 in federal revenue. That sounds like an excellent return on investment to me.

IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman warned Congress that the deep cuts in funding for the IRS proposed in the House-passed budget resolution for FY 2012 would diminish enforcement actions against tax cheats and increase the deficit. As we’ve noted before, the IRS has stepped up its scrutiny of high-income taxpayers recently – which may explain why the House GOP wants to cut the IRS budget!

It’s becoming more and more apparent that the real agenda in the Republican-led House isn't reducing the deficit at all; it’s making sure that the really, really rich get to keep all that money – including by making it easier for them to get away with cheating on their taxes.