Political Quotes

“Here is the story. Here are the honest facts. Republicans have cut the IRS budget by close to $1 billion over the past 5 years. This bill is just another budget cut, further reducing the IRS' budget by as much as $500 million. The consequences of these budget cuts for taxpayers are significant, as you can see from this chart. What has happened since 2011 is the appropriations have gone down and waiting times have gone up. The average wait is shown by this blue line. The dollars are in the yellow. The only improvement was when we appropriated a couple hundred million dollars at the initiative of Democrats, and the waiting times went down as money went up. The Republicans who complain about poor IRS customer service, they have only to look in the mirror to see who is responsible. Here are the facts. Republican cuts to the IRS budget from 2010 to 2015 resulted in--and everyone listen to this--13,000 fewer full-time IRS employees; a significant number of taxpayer phone calls being dropped, as indicated by this chart; delays in much-needed upgrades to information technology and cybersecurity; and the lowest level of audits in a decade with less than 1 percent of taxpayers being audited last year. This is all despite the fact that the number of tax returns being filed increased by $9 million, or 7 percent, since 2010. {time} 1230 This effort today is motivated entirely by politics instead of good policy.…”