Biden’s IRS Chases Chump Change
August 10, 2023
Criminals stole at least $1 trillion from taxpayers during the pandemic. To date the Biden administration has offered only lip service and modest funding to try to reclaim these funds and punish wrongdoers. Meanwhile President Biden is hiring an army of Internal Revenue Service agents to shake down Americans he claims are tax avoiders. And his commitment is concrete—$80 billion to hire 87,000 new IRS agents. According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, all that extra manpower and money will net the federal government only about $100 billion. Why not spend some of it settling a far larger bill?
The Government Accountability Office estimates the federal government made $528 billion in improper payments in 2021 and 2022. Some were the result of honest mistakes. But many swindlers saw opportunity in the blizzard of pandemic relief programs, filing false claims and outright stealing taxpayer money. As astonishing as half a trillion dollars in estimated improper payments is, the real cost of the unprecedented mismanagement and fraud is much higher. GAO numbers exclude improper payments in major programs like Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and food stamps because the federal agencies running those programs didn’t bother reporting them, despite being required to do so by law.
The House Ways and Means Committee estimates that fraudulent payments made under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program alone could be as high as $400 billion, only $5 billion of which has been recovered. Almost all the crooks who stole taxpayer money are getting away with it. Likewise, President Biden has failed to hold any of his appointees accountable for the massive amounts of money stolen under their noses. Julie Su, who ran the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance at the Labor Department, has been offered a promotion. Mr. Biden has nominated her to be labor secretary.