On Thursday April 11 at ATR’s annual Tax Day press conference, Grover Norquist was joined by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R – La.) to discuss IRS oversight and Biden tax increases.
A video of the full conference can be viewed here.
Majority Leader Scalise said:
“If you look at President Biden’s agenda over the last few years, look, Joe Biden started off when he came into office with the goal and then carried it out to double the size of the IRS.
Think about that, Double the size of the IRS.
We got a lot of calls as members of congress from constituents for a lot of things. We need help, people, veterans that want federal agencies to help them, or you know, maybe the benefits that they earn and they’re not properly getting.
I have never gotten a single call from a constituent asking to add a single person to the ranks of the IRS, let alone to double the size of the IRS.
But, that was Joe Biden’s agenda and he passed it. Now we’ve been fighting in a Republican majority to bring that back down to, you know, take that if you look at the Israel funding bill we sent over to the Senate paid for it by taking some of the money out of the new IRS agents.
So again, hard working families would be able to see that we can help our friend Israel and not have to borrow that money.
So it was another example of a contrast between what we’re trying to do in this House Republican majority and what Joe Biden wants to do.
But you know, one final piece and this is something we work with Grover on. So many things, you know, the anti-carbon tax resolution that we brought. Again, we actually grew the vote on that bill this year. So [Montana Congressman] Ryan Zinke led the effort this year and you saw a bigger vote of not just Republicans but Democrats, we actually had 10 Democrats that joined with us to say we shouldn’t have a carbon tax at that time.
Joe Biden is trying to crush the fossil fuel industry in America where we recognize that making energy in America is the smartest, most efficient, and lowest emitting way to make energy in the entire world. We should be making more in America.
Joe Biden wants to crush this industry, wants to tax this industry, which means hard working families would pay more money for their energy costs. Families don’t want to do that. They shouldn’t have to do it. And every Republican said no, they shouldn’t have to. And we even had some Democrats that joined us.
But if you wonder what the difference is with this one vote majority, why it’s so important to keep this Republican majority with one vote in the majority as thin as that is. As tough as it is sometimes to pass the things we want, the one thing that’s not happening is Joe Biden is not getting his agenda passed through Congress.
You watched the State of the Union and what did Joe Biden talk about? You know, when you shave off all the angry divisive rhetoric, which was most of what he said. He talked about raising more taxes on hard working families. Families are sick of the increased spending, increased taxes that are crushing their chance to get the American dream.
And so House Republicans with that one-vote majority are the only thing standing in the way of those higher taxes, that higher inflation that Joe Biden wants to impose upon those families. And ATR has always been at the forefront.”