In its annual financial services and general government bill, which covers funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Republicans propose reducing IRS funding in fiscal year 2025 by $2.2 billion compared to the previous year.
Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), who heads the subcommittee that crafts the annual funding bill, argued the measure “takes steps to prevent agencies like the IRS from unfairly targeting hardworking Americans.”
But Democrats have pushed back fiercely against the proposal, with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), top Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, saying the plan “includes approximately 80 new, problematic, or pointless policy riders.”
The proposed budget cuts for the IRS follow an initial $80 billion funding boost for the agency passed as part of Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that Republicans have been chipping away at in the form of annual appropriations reductions.
Republicans and Democrats agreed to cut around $20 billion of the $80 billion cash injection in the form of annual appropriations cuts last year as part of the deal to avert a default on U.S. debt.
As of the end of last year, the IRS had only spent about 5.6 percent of its total IRA funding. Only 1 percent of the enforcement budget — its single biggest component and one dependent on specialized hiring of experienced auditors — had been allotted as of Dec. 31.
The Hill’s Tobias Burns has the latest here.
