Ron DeSantis: Fleet of IRS Agents Will Be Used to Target Middle-Class Americans

The fleet of 87,000 new IRS agents, made possible by the left-wing Inflation Reduction Act, will be used to target middle class Americans, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on Tuesday at a press conference.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act will — ironically — make inflation worse, DeSantis said.

“There’s so many offensive things, and a lot of people aren’t talking about it,” he said, explaining that Democrats hope to kneecap “our own production here” as gas prices remain significantly higher than when former President Donald Trump was in office.

“And then in this bill, they actually impose taxes on energy production on both oil and gas. And so how is that going to cause you to pay less when they’re taxing it more? All those costs are going to be — those taxes are going to be passed on to all of you in the form of higher prices. and so that’s going to happen, for sure,” he said, calling it “very counterproductive.”

“Not only are they doing the taxes. … They’re adding 87,000 IRS agents,” he said, debunking the claims that they would just go after billionaires.

“First of all there’s not that many billionaires to need 87,000. Second of all, billionaires have accountants, they have lawyers and a lot of what billionaires do is they exploit the loopholes that Congress has put in the tax code over the years. That’s just the truth,” he said, refuting the left’s myths.

“There was an amendment that was offered in the Senate when this bill was being debated that said you cannot use any of these IRS agents to go after anyone earning less than $400,000 a year. The Democrats voted that amendment down so it can go — it can go for anybody,” he explained.

“Who are they going to go after? They’re gonna go after the people that don’t have the wherewithal to withstand these audits. People that have lawyers and accountants, they know how to do this, but they’re gonna go after a sole proprietor. They’re gonna go after some handyman. They’re gonna go after somebody driving an Uber or somebody owning a family restaurant. That’s who they’re gonna go after, because you can turn the screws on those folks, and you can really get a pound of flesh,” DeSantis said, adding that the agents will be used to “go after people they don’t like.”

DeSantis continued, blasting President Biden for deeming MAGA Americans “semi-fascist.”

“They’re using the power of the state to weaponize that against people that they don’t like and so who do they not like? Well, they don’t like people who are small business, people are individual entrepreneurs, whatever, that’s where that’s going to go,” he said, warning that it will have a “really devastating effect.”

“So it’s a slap in the face for a government that doesn’t even enforce the law itself at the border and other places to be going after Americans based on technicalities in the tax code,” he said, reemphasizing that “this is not going to reduce inflation one red cent.”

“If anything, it’s going to increase inflation,” he added.

WATCH:

A recent poll found that nearly half of Americans believe new IRS agents will be used to target the middle class or the political opponents of those in power.