Yes, Biden Is Proposing That the IRS Spy on Your Bank Records

Here’s yet another example of why “fact-checking” is the most dishonest form of journalism.

To try and find an additional $7 trillion in taxes over the next decade, Joe Biden is floating a plan that would empower the IRS to access any account with $600 in gross transactions (Democrats upped the number to $10,000 this week, after considerable blowback.) In addition to more IRS oversight — scooping, spying, ferreting out, keeping tabs, what have you — Biden also proposed doubling the amount of IRS agents and funding the agency six times its present budget. TheWashington Post’s Salvador Rizzo says Republican complaints about the policy are untrue.

First of all, I couldn’t help noticing that the second paragraph of the fact-check gives away the game:

After Democrats watered down his proposal in response to Republican concerns, GOP senators nonetheless took turns describing it as an unprecedented invasion of privacy.

Is he kidding? Democrats watered down the proposal because of public response to an unprecedented expansion of IRS power. At least seven House Democrats reportedly opposed the idea, and there were likely others. Democrats have never once even feigned to care about GOP opposition to any part of the reconciliation bill. The contention that Pelosi or Biden or Schumer are placating Republicans or scaling back proposals because of GOP objections is worthy of ten Pinocchios. This is a unilateral partisan effort.