The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1476428
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, August 17, 2022 C-3 OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel See POLITICS on page 4 See AUDIT on page 4 Shannon, a leader we need in Washington A runoff election will take place in Oklahoma Aug. 23, which will decide who the Republican candidate will be to run for the Senate seat held by James Inhofe since 1994. Thirteen candidates ran in the pri- mar y. But no one got 50% of the vote, hence the Aug. 23 runoff. Leading the field is Rep. Mark- wayne Mullin, who received the en- dorsement of former President Don- ald Trump and received 43.6% of the vote in the primar y. Running second was T.W. Shannon, who got 17.5% of the vote, and who will face off with Mullin Aug. 23. A poll one week ago in Oklahoma City by News 9/News on 6 showed Mullin at 57.1% and Shannon at 32.4%. Shannon still lags significantly, but since the primar y, he has picked up support disproportionately greater than Mullin. It is clearly a challenge for Shan- non to close this gap by Aug. 23, but it's not impossible. Which is the point of this column. I happen to know T.W. Shannon. He is a friend and ser ves on the board of my organization, CURE. It is because I know Shannon and his family so well that I know his ex- traordinar y leadership and personal characteristics that make his pres- ence in the U.S. Senate so import- ant in these particularly challenging times. At the age of 34, Shannon became the youngest speaker of the Okla- homa House of Representatives in histor y and the first Chickasaw and African American to hold this post. And, in his becoming speaker, T.W. became the first African American Republican to head a legislative body since Reconstruction. Shannon is also a businessman and banker and is CEO of the Chick- asaw Community Bank. He assumed leadership of Black Voices for Trump after the passing of Herman Cain. But most important, he is a man of principles, and the principles that drive his vision are the principles that drove those that founded our nation. At a time when we have so badly lost our way, when our nation's future is uncertain because the pillars of limit- ed government and family have been so badly compromised and lost, we need leaders who see our problems clearly and will not waiver in leader- ship to get our nation back on track. Shannon is running on what he calls the 3 C's: Christianity, Capital- ism and the Constitution. Some bris- tle when a candidate is upfront about his Christianity. But one famous Re- publican who did not was President Ronald Reagan, who quoted William Penn saying, "If we will not be gov- erned by God, we must be governed by tyrants." Which brings in capitalism and the Constitution. The Constitution was written to ensure that the power of government was defined and limited so that in a nation under God, men could be free. Capitalism is about pri- vate property and unleashing individ- ual initiative and creativity. These three pillars built the great- est nation in histor y. But we have lost our way. Government at local, state and federal levels is now taking al- most 50% of the American economy. Congressional Democrats are about to pass into law the deceptively titled Inflation Reduction Act. This amounts to hundreds of billions in new spending and taxes driven by those in Washington deciding who winners and losers in the U.S. econ- omy will be. Contrar y to the claims of Democrats, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, who was chief economist of Trump's council of economic advisers, says the law will cut employment by 900,000, GDP by 1.2%, average household in- come by $1,200, and cause increases in inflation and the deficit. Black conser vatives like T.W. Shannon are so deeply committed to our founding principles because they know how badly their communities have suffered as a result of depar- ture from these principles. We have today two Black Republicans in the House and one in the Senate. We need the passion and commit- ment of more Black conser vatives like T.W. Shannon in national leader- ship. Politics by profession Why are you a conser vative? Or a libertarian, Republican, Dem- ocrat, socialist? Ok, if you read my column, you're probably not a socialist ... But how do people come to such different conclusions? We like to think that our politics are formed by rational analysis. We analyze what conser vatives and liberals write, weigh their ideas, and form conclu- sions based on facts and evidence. But it turns out something else is probably going on. I can predict your political party pretty accurately if I just know what you do for a living. Here's why I say that: When you give money to a political candidate, the government requires that candidate's campaign to ask you what your profession is. That infor- mation is turned over to the Federal Election Commission. Verdant Labs took that data and made an info- graphic that shows how people's pro- fessions predict their politics. Eighty-nine percent of people who work in the fossil fuel industr y do- nate to Republicans. Teachers most- ly (79%) give to Democrats. Sixty-four percent of flight atten- dants give to Democrats, but pilots (62%) prefer Republicans. Why? In my new video, Rob Henderson, who studies the psychology of poli- tics at the University of Cambridge, tries to explain. For pilots, he says, "Their job is whether they take off and land and ever yone's alive. Whereas for flight attendants, their job is more reliant on, 'How do people feel about you?'" Those differences lead them to dif- ferent political parties. The job differences go on and on. Bartenders mostly give to Demo- crats (89%), while truck drivers favor Republicans (69%). Business own- ers lean right (62%). Artists lean left (86%). "People who lean left tend to be sort of more open, more creative, more interested in abstract ideas," says Henderson. Maybe that ex- plains why most artists support Democrats. "People on the right tend to be more conscientious, more interest- ed in punctuality," says Henderson. That could explain the pilots and business owners. Psychologists over whelmingly give to Democrats (91%), while peo- ple in the militar y favor Republicans (60%). Henderson has lived in both of those worlds. "I'm a doctoral candi- date in psychology in Cambridge," he says. "Before, my life was a lot different." Henderson ser ved eight years in the Air Force. There, he says, most of his colleagues were conser vative, and he was sometimes teased for holding a liberal position. "It was all good-natured," he says. "Someone can hold different views but still be a good person." But now in academia, he says the politics is not good-natured. He sees lots of hatred. He thinks it's because increasingly, the left and the right don't mix. Recent sur veys do show that now, 80% of us have few or no friends across the aisle. It is hard to be friendly with people you never meet. At colleges today, there are few conser vatives. One study of professors found 12 Dem- ocrats per Republican. In sociology departments, it was 44 to 1. In com- munications, 108 to zero! "People have no Republican col- leagues, no conser vative or liber- tarians that they interact with day to day," Henderson says. Spending no time with people who think differently does make it easier to hate them. To understand the other side, shouldn't we talk to each other more? That's what I tr y to do with my videos -- bring both sides together to argue. Then they learn a little about the other side. Many still hate each other anyway. Eighty-nine percent of bartend- ers donate to Democrats, but beer wholesalers (78%) prefer Republi- cans. Taxi drivers (85%) give to Demo- crats, truck drivers (69%) to Repub- licans. Pediatricians (79%) favor Demo- crats, but urologists (76%) prefer Re- publicans. Why? I have no clue. Architects (74%) prefer Demo- crats, while home builders (77%) The Biden administration has promised not to raise taxes on any- one making under $400,000 a year. And despite estimates from official congressional scorekeepers that the Schumer-Manchin-Biden tax in- crease indeed would raise taxes on those Americans, the administra- tion has doubled down on the claim as a final vote nears on Democrats' bill(Ed. note: the bill was passed by the House and awaits Biden's signature). Treasur y Secretar y Janet Yellen sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig that includes this statement: Specifically, I direct that any ad- ditional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or house- holds below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels. Yellen's directive follows Rettig's Aug. 4 letter to U.S. senators declar- ing the same objective: These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-in- come Americans. As we've been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Trea- sur y's directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000. But considering the sheer magni- tude of 87,000 new IRS agents and an estimated $204 billion in new reve- nues from enforcement, is it possible for all those new audits and revenues to involve only taxpayers making more than $400,000? Returning to 2010 audit rates for all individuals making more than $400,000 would generate only 28%, or $9.9 billion, out of the estimated $35.3 billion in new IRS enforcement revenues in 2031. Even increasing recent audit rates 30-fold for taxpayers making over $400,000, including 100% audit rates on taxpayers with incomes over $10 million, still would fall more than 20% short of raising the estimat- ed $35.3 billion in new revenues in 2031. Note: This assumes a 98% increase in the number of tax filers making over $400,000 between 2019 and 2031, based on an- nual growth rates between 2014 and 2019. Audit rates from 2010 to 2019 by income group and additional tax per individual tax return audited for 2021 is available here from the non- partisan Government Accountability Office. Estimated revenues from a 30-fold increase in audits almost certainly is overstated, since 30% to 40% percent of audits in these income groups re- sult in no additional tax being owed, and audits already target returns with higher likelihoods of underpay- ments. Auditing ever y single taxpayer with annual income over $1 million would require only 25,000 new IRS enforcement agents, but Democrats' bill calls for 87,000 new agents. What will all those extra agents be doing? Note: Estimates are based on the Treasury Department's estimated new full-time-equivalent agents, and the Government Accountability Office's estimated hours per audit by individ- ual income level. Calculations conser vatively as- sume that only 57.3% of the Treasur y Department's estimated 86,852 new IRS agents (49,754 in total) would be assigned to enforcement, based on $45.6 billion of the bill's $79.6 billion increase for the Internal Revenue Ser vice dedicated to enforcement. Calculations also assume that 8.9% of IRS enforcement agents would be as- signed to corporate audits, based on the Congressional Budget Office's estimate that corporations account for 8.9% of the tax gap. Enforcement agents are assumed to spend 75% of their paid time auditing tax returns. Despite the Biden administration's claims, it's almost certain that house- holds making less than $400,000 a year would face increased audits un- der Democrats' bill. And that seems to be the true intent of the IRS. According to a 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, "From fiscal years 2010 to 2021, the majority of the additional taxes IRS recommend- ed from audits came from taxpayers with incomes below $200,000." That recommendation is based on audits of lower-income tax returns producing more bang for the buck, as the report noted: Audits of the lowest-income tax- payers, particularly those claiming the EITC [earned income tax cred- it], resulted in higher amounts of recommended additional tax per audit hour compared to all income groups except for the highest-in- come taxpayers. The Treasur y Department's re- port on the proposed new funding includes a footnote highlighting the already-high prevalence of IRS au- dits among low-income households: Ever yone should be deeply trou- bled by the recent report that the Army is on pace to miss its recruit- ing goal by dozens of thousands of troops and by the report that fol- lowed a few days later, alleging that the Border Patrol is running short of agents in Arizona and Texas. The border is so porous these days that even mayors of sanctuar y cities are starting to complain about illegal im- migration. So, what is Congress doing about these crises? They are going to spend tens of billions of dollars to increase the number of ... IRS em- ployees. The plan calls for spending some $80 billion to hire some 80,000 new agents and investigators. This will give the IRS the resources to double the number of people who get audited ever y year. Is this about the most warped set of national priorities you've ever heard? If this $80 billion were rerout- ed to the Army and the Border Pa- trol, we could easily stop much of the tide of illegal immigration and staff up our militar y so we have the sol- diers we need to defend our countr y. According to official budget num- bers, the overall cost of border secu- rity at the Department of Homeland Security is roughly $55 billion a year. That is less than just the increase in IRS funding to harass the public. Or consider this: The epidemic of opioid and other drug overdoses is killing close to 100,000 a year. We spend about $11 billion a year to prevent these tragic deaths. But the ironi- cally named Inflation Reduction Act calls for 30 times more than this, or more than $300 billion, to tr y to combat climate change, while the number of those who die from CO2 emis- sions each year is close to zero. All of this is to say that the Biden-Manchin-Schumer spending bill that has now passed the Senate is arguably the greatest misalloca- tion of our federal dollars in Ameri- can histor y. It spends money in areas where we should be cutting expens- es and ignores national security pri- orities. The reason we have inflation is that the Biden administration has increased spending by $3 trillion in 18 months. Almost ever yone knows this. The central idiocy of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act is that in- stead of cutting a half a trillion from the budget, this bill does just the op- posite: It increases spending by that amount. Incredibly, a bill that supposedly reduces the budget deficit does not cut one penny of actu- al spending from the federal budget. Even with federal audit re- ports finding more than $250 billion of "erroneous" payments in Medicaid, food stamps and unemploy- ment insurance, Con- gress does nothing to reduce the fraud and theft. As the latest report on shortages of recruits in our armed forces tells us, we have national priorities that need to be met. This bill bloats the budget, makes inflation worse and will add to our $30 trillion national debt without dealing with any of the nation's priorities. It's reminiscent of the immortal line by Jeff Daniels to Jim Carrey in "Dumb and Dumber": "Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any- thing dumber ..." Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy." Heritage Viewpoint By Rachel Greszler Fact-checking team Biden on who those 87,000 new IRS agents would audit Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Biden puts IRS funding ahead of security