Healey Opposes “Inflation Reduction Act” as Irresponsible Spending Action

–Calls on Congressman Kim to Vote Against ‘Supersizing’ the IRS–

MOORESTOWN, NJ— Republican candidate for Congress Bob Healey today issued the following statement:

“As the economy teeters on the edge of a full-blown recession, only out-of-touch politicians in Washington, D.C. could put forward a federal spend-a-thon and give it a title claiming to do something it doesn’t. In Washington, higher taxes equals ‘revenue enhancements’ and more federal spending is ‘deficit reduction.’”

The new Senate spend-a-thon measure illustrates the Democrat view on tax relief: nothing for taxpayers, money for special interests, and $80 billion for the IRS tax bureaucracy with an almost assured mandate to make up the difference by 87,000 new enforcement agents auditing middle class households and small businesses.

If Rep. Kim was serious about addressing his constituents’ inflation concerns, we would vigorously oppose this irresponsible spending action. Unfortunately, Kim’s shown himself to be a partisan rubberstamp who votes 100% in lockstep with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. The spending priorities of Biden, Pelosi, and Kim start with creating a new army of tens of thousands of tax agents to harass taxpayers.  What America really needs is tens of thousands more police, more border guards and more school security officers.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed by the Senate includes almost one-half trillion ($430 billion) in new spending including the doubling the size of the IRS. Every honest economist will admit that today’s four-decade high inflation is caused in large part by the Biden Administration’s unrestrained, unchecked march to fiscal insolvency. Now Senate Democrats, with the support of their House colleagues like Rep. Andy Kim, have endorsed even more spending under the dubiously titled initiative, the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The independent, non-partisan Tax Foundation’s analysis of the spending and tax provisions of the bill would have negative net impact on GDP (-0.1%), job growth (-30,000) and wages (-0.1%).[1] Increasing federal revenues is Democrat code for Biden-Kim to increase taxes—exactly what the economy does not need. Worse still, Rep. Kim promised to restore the SALT deduction, yet after three and a half years of a Democrat-controlled House and a year-and-a-half with a Democratic President, still no action, just more spending.

Since 2019, the Congress’ unrestrained spending has created budget deficits over the last three fiscal years totaling a mind-numbing $6.884 trillion[2]. While some of these federal outlays were justified by a once-in-a-century pandemic, the country is moving out of that crisis.

[1] “Details & Analysis of the Senate Inflation Reduction Act Tax Provisions”, https://taxfoundation.org/inflation-reduction-act, Tax Foundation, 8/2/2022.

[2] 2019 Budget Deficit: $984.4 billion; 2020 Budget Deficit: $3.1 trillion; 2021 Budget Deficit: $2.8 trillion, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/deficit-tracker/