Republicans Reject Funding for IRS Operations

[Ana the Ist]

That's the nice thing, you don't fund the infrastructure bill, you let it flounder and then use it as ammunition in the 2022 elections.

Exactly.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

What part of the proposal isn't directly related to infrastructure?

How much infrastructure is in Biden's infrastructure plan?

Even his own fact sheet on the White House websites list off several things that are only very loosely related to infrastructure, or aren't related to it at all.
FACT SHEET: The American Jobs Plan | The White House

I would say there's even some things in there that are a "poison pill"

You don't have to look far back throughout history to see the "poison pill" has become a popular tactic for US politicians.

Create bill/proposal with a noble sounding name that includes some good things...and then lump in some things you know the other side would never go for. Then when they (predictably) fight back against it, you can accuse them of not caring about the semantically stated noble-sounding purpose of the bill.

We saw a lot of the same thing back in the day with the Hurricane Katrina relief bill... Republicans tried to tack on non-related funding for Iraq military endeavors (and when democrats didn't want to sign off on it, republicans accused them of "putting politics over people"), and in classic tit-for-tat fashion, democrats tried to attach earmarks and pork spending of their own unrelated to the disaster, and Bush threatened to veto it as a result, they turned around and said "oh look, he doesn't care about hurricane victims".

Both sides have figured out how to play the game and play it well...

 

[Arcangl86]

How much infrastructure is in Biden's infrastructure plan?

Even his own fact sheet on the White House websites list off several things that are only very loosely related to infrastructure, or aren't related to it at all.
FACT SHEET: The American Jobs Plan | The White House

I would say there's even some things in there that are a "poison pill"

You don't have to look far back throughout history to see the "poison pill" has become a popular tactic for US politicians.

Create bill/proposal with a noble sounding name that includes some good things...and then lump in some things you know the other side would never go for. Then when they (predictably) fight back against it, you can accuse them of not caring about the semantically stated noble-sounding purpose of the bill.

We saw a lot of the same thing back in the day with the Hurricane Katrina relief bill... Republicans tried to tack on non-related funding for Iraq military endeavors (and when democrats didn't want to sign off on it, republicans accused them of "putting politics over people"), and in classic tit-for-tat fashion, democrats tried to attach earmarks and pork spending of their own unrelated to the disaster, and Bush threatened to veto it as a result, they turned around and said "oh look, he doesn't care about hurricane victims".

Both sides have figured out how to play the game and play it well...

That's nice. This also isn't the proposal we are talking about. This one is a lot smaller and focused on physical infrastructure. https://static.politico.com/0a/08/3...nfrastructure-framework-two-pager-final-7.pdf. Biden also supports a much more sweeping bill, including tax increases on higher income folk, but that's a seperate bill they intend to pass using reconciliation.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

That's nice. This also isn't the proposal we are talking about. This one is a lot smaller and focused on physical infrastructure. https://static.politico.com/0a/08/3...nfrastructure-framework-two-pager-final-7.pdf. Biden also supports a much more sweeping bill, including tax increases on higher income folk, but that's a seperate bill they intend to pass using reconciliation.

I can't see in particular which one is being referenced in the OP, it's behind a paywall.

But in terms of the IRS tax gap, seems like the issue is more that our tax code is overcomplicated...which in turn, requires more people in order to enforce it.

CNN even acknowledged as much in their article about the matter
The tax gap sheds light on how some people and businesses aren't paying their fair share. But it's not entirely the result of bad actors trying to evade the tax man.
"Failures to comply with tax law often involve unintentional mistakes that are the result of not fully understanding what has come to be an extremely complex tax code,"

Make it simple enough so that everyone can understand it and do their own taxes, and you'll have far fewer people under-paying...and thus, need less enforcement personnel.

Simplifying the tax code also has other perks with regards to small/medium sized businesses. If you don't have to hire a lawyer and two accountants to handle your taxes, that's more money you can reinvest in the business (and the employees)


But I guess it depends on what the actual goal behind it is... if the goal is to shrink the tax gap, then the first place they should be looking at is simplification and seeing where that gets them before resorting to ramping up enforcement.

However, if the goal is to send a message of "hey look, I'm tough on those greedy rich people", then that would make sense that they're starting with the enforcement angle first.

PolitiFact - Tax code is so long that nobody's really sure of its length