Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) got taken to the proverbial woodshed Friday during debate on legislation that would deal with climate change and taxation after Boebert began spinning wild conspiracy theories and lies about the bill in question.
During her speech on the House floor regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, Boebert incorrectly asserted that Democrats were intent on “making the IRS, with armed agents, larger than the Pentagon.”
She added:
“This bill hires 87,000 new IRS agents and they are armed and the job description tells them that they need to be required to carry a firearm and expect to use deadly force if necessary!”
But as the Washington Post reports, Boebert and many of her GOP colleagues are lying about the bill:
Natasha Sarin, Treasury counselor for tax policy and implementation, told The Fact Checker that over half of the IRS staff — 50,000 — is eligible for retirement in the next five years. Much of the funding for new employees will be focused on mitigating that attrition and adding customer service and information technology specialists in addition to enforcement agents. The agency has also lost about 40 percent of the agency staff who specialize in complex tax audits, bringing it to the level of the agency in World War II, she said.
In any case, the 87,000 figure is wildly exaggerated. These people are not all new tax agents.
Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth of Kentucky also laid an instant fact-check and reprimand on Boebert:
“I will say in response to the gentlewoman from Colorado, this is typical of what the Republicans are doing. First of all, they’re making up numbers. There’s nowhere anywhere that says 87,000 new IRS agents will be hired in this bill. That’s a totally fabricated number. And the idea that they’re armed — I know Mrs. Boebert would like everyone to be armed as they are in her restaurant, but that’s not what IRS agents do. I would implore my Republican colleagues to… cut out the scare tactics.”