As congressional Democrats continue their intramural fight over how to spend trillions of dollars we don’t have, at least one very bad idea the Biden administration has floated to defray part of the cost has hit a wall.
That wall is West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, and the idea is the proposal to give the IRS a deeper look into the bank accounts of millions of Americans. The intent: surely, somewhere, there’s a pile of undeclared tax money just waiting to be found. Manchin is having nothing of it:
…[Manchin] had already told President Joe Biden that he was against that idea.
“Do you understand how messed up that is?” Manchin said he told the president. “This cannot happen. It’s screwed up.”
“I think that one’s going to be gone,” Manchin added.
That’s a fairly good sign the idea is on its last legs. But totally dead? Not yet. But the general sentiment is cautiously optimistic that additional IRS surveillance may be out of whatever final legislation passes Congress.