American Prospect: Democrats Allow More IRS Funding to Fade Away
Because of the return on investment in tax enforcement, gutting the IRS will make that harder to pay for in reconciliation, said Sarah Christopherson, an independent tax policy expert.
Other potential sites for reconciliation disagreements include the expiring state and local tax (SALT) deduction and the need for a debt ceiling increase. Christopherson emphasized that, because of this dynamic, “Democrats should not be doing them any favors” that could make Republicans’ balancing act easier by allowing rescissions under the regular budget process.
Everyone I spoke to agreed that the ideal outcome would have been to attach an anomaly now to set the tone heading into next year. “It sends a very bad signal if Democrats don’t put up a fight [to protect the IRS],” Christopherson said. …
They’ve used the IRS enforcement investment “as a piggy bank, when they should have treated it as a scarce nonrenewable resource,” according to Christopherson.
Christopherson told me that Biden’s debt ceiling deal with McCarthy “was a big strategic error that has only become more obvious in retrospect.”
