Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that expanding the IRS was the Biden administration's way of giving Americans "the middle finger."
President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed a climate and healthcare spending bill into law, which includes $80 billion to overhaul the IRS.
According to the New York Post, the earmarks of the bill would allow the service to hire roughly 87,000 new agents, essentially doubling its size.
DeSantis says the Democrats' legislation will result in Washington "going after you."
"Of all the things that have come out of Washington that have been outrageous, this has got to be pretty close to the top,” DeSantis said at a Wednesday press conference about teacher recruitment. "I think it was basically just the middle finger to the American public, that this is what they think of you."
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently wrote a letter outlining that the $80 billion in funding the IRS is set to receive would not be used to bolster the agency's auditing of middle-income earners and small businesses.
But DeSantis, considered a contender for a spot in the 2024 GOP national ticket, warned that the expanded IRS won't go after billionaires.
"They are going to go after independent contractors. They're going to go after small business people. They're going to go after someone that may be driving an Uber or a handyman or all these things," DeSantis said. "Why would they do that? Because you're not going to be able to contend with the audit, so they’re going to crush a lot of people by doing that."
IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said the new resources will allow the agency to provide additional services to taxpayers.
"The IRS has struggled for many years with insufficient resources to fulfill our important mission," Rettig said in a statement Tuesday. "During the next 10 years, these funds will help us in many areas, including adding critical resources to not just close the tax gap but meaningfully improve taxpayer service and technology."
Following the FBI raid at former President Donald Trump's Palm Beach, Florida, home last week, DeSantis also criticized the bolstering of IRS investigators.
"The raid of MAL [Mar-a-Lago] is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime's political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic." DeSantis tweeted Aug. 8.
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