Biden’s Treasury Secretary Says ‘A Strong IRS Is Critical To The Economic Success Of This Country’

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen praised Democrat President Joe Biden’s decision to massively increase funding to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), saying that “a strong IRS is critical to the economic success of this country.”

The Democrats’ so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” which is projected to increase inflation despite its name, provides the IRS with $80 billion in funding to hire 87,000 new employees over the next decade — more than doubling the agency’s current size.

During a speech at the New Carrollton Federal Building in Maryland, Yellen claimed that “adequately funding the IRS is core to our success.”

“It raises the revenue for us to make important investments in our economic strength,” she continued. “It makes sure that all Americans are playing by the same rules. It avoids misallocation of resources in the economy at large. And it does so by deterring taxpayers from shifting their activities toward more opaque sources or engaging in tax evasion.”

Yellen again promised that the additional funding will not increase audits for American households earning less than $400,000 per year “relative to historical levels.” As noted by the Daily Wire, however, Yellen “failed to clarify that ‘historical levels’ of audits were far higher as recently as one decade ago. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, audit rates for Americans earning between $25,000 and $200,000 fell 76% between 2010 and 2019, while those earning less than $25,000 saw audit rates fall by 61%.”

Yellen added, “In all, a strong IRS is critical to the economic success of this country — and I am heartened that we are finally reflecting that in our funding decisions.”

Yellen’s comments come one week after she praised the U.S. economy under Biden, saying the country experienced “one of the quickest economic recoveries in our modern history.”

Notably, the United States officially entered a recession after the economy shrunk 1.6% in the first quarter of 2022 and 0.6% in the second quarter.

Yellen also notoriously failed to predict the inflation crisis, repeatedly promising throughout 2021 that inflation was “transitory” and just a “small risk.” She recently admitted to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that she had been “wrong” about inflation because of shocks in the economy that she, the Treasury Secretary, didn’t “fully understand.”