Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) our January 2023 Porker of the Month for thinking it is a bad idea to cut off $80 billion to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after taxpayers.

On January 9, 2023, House Republicans voted to rescind the $80 billion allocated in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to create an 87,000 strong IRS auditor army and a wasteful $15 million study on whether the IRS should create its own tax prep program. Sen. Wyden is falsely claiming that rescinding IRS funding will allow some Americans to continue to “cheat” on taxes. For many years, the IRS has been plagued with waste and mismanagement. The IRA increased IRS funding by 600 percent, making the agency’s budget larger than the State Department, FBI, and Customs and Border Patrol combined. Sen. Wyden thinks that if more money is poured into the dysfunctional IRS, “we could shore up Medicare and Social Security,” except those programs are not funded by income taxes.

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “Sen. Wyden’s objection to cutting $80 billion for 87,000 IRS auditors and $15 million for a duplicative and unnecessary tax prep program means more audits for millions of small businesses and Americans making less than $200,000, and no changes in the agency’s decades-long mismanagement. The national debt is $31.5 trillion and climbing while inflation continues to soar. Sen. Wyden is putting taxpayers last as he wants to pour more money into a problematic government agency. Members of Congress like him should be working to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. For thinking that the IRS should be given more money to go after more taxpayers, Sen. Wyden is an obvious choice for CAGW’s January Porker of the Month.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. For more than two decades, Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers and government officials who have shown a blatant disregard for the taxpayers.

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