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Democrats pitch in the midterms: More IRS audits to target you, and fewer police to protect you. What could go wrong?

As Nancy Pelosi readies the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and its $80 billion to add 87,000 agents to the IRS, Punchbowl reports that progressive Democrats have succeeded in killing the police-funding bill:

The Houseis scheduled to return Friday to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, setting up a big win for PresidentJoe Bidenand the Democrats.

But Speaker Nancy Pelosiand House Democratic leaders are unlikely to move ahead with a series of bills to boost police funding, according to lawmakers and aides.

While vulnerable Frontlinersand Democratic moderates are pressing the leadership for a floor vote on these measures, opposition from progressives and the Congressional Black Caucus has derailed this effort.

Progressives and the CBCwere concerned about the lack of accountability languagein the bills before the House left for the August recess, so a floor vote was delayed. The hope among Democrats at that time was they could work out their differences and take up the measures when the House returned to take up a reconciliation.

But its not happening apparently.And its not at all clear it can happen in September either, despite Pelosis support for the effort.

Supposedly, House Democrats planned to pass the police funding along with the so-called assault weapons ban. That plan reportedly fell apart late last month, only to be revived momentarily and pushed off until after Labor Day. The House passed its AWB bill on July 29 while still promising to iron out the police funding.

Now, however, it appears that progressives have reneged on their pledge to moderates on police funding. Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal told Punchbowl that she didnt want to step on the Democrats message of unity, or something:

We have communicated to all of leadership exactly where we are. We communicated it last week that there simply wasnt the votes. It would be a very, very divisive thing to do. We need to be disciplined as Democrats and not step on our success, not snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Lets focus on this massive victory for the American people this week.

This could be a little bit of payback. After months of holding the bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage to the $5 trillion Build Back Better plan, progressives finally allowed a vote on the former while being promised a vote on the latter by moderates. That didnt work out for Jayapal at the time, and shes likely looking for a chance to stick it to the moderates this time around.

If this is the opportunity progressives choose, though yikes. Americans are facing generational-high crime rates, especially in the cities, while progressive efforts to defund police and roll back criminal prosecutions worsen their lived experience. Rather than take a moment for a slam-dunk way to protect at-risk incumbents in this cycle, House Democrats will instead spend anenormous amount of money to double the IRS and demand greater intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans.

Thats quite the juxtaposition: funding tax audits rather than crime prevention. It should pay off handsomely, too for Republicans, assuming they publicize this choice widely.

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Priorities: House progressives torpedo police-funding bill while adding ...

Its being called the Great Realignment. Allahpundit mentioned it yesterday at the end of this post. In short, the most recent NY Times polls shows that Democrats have more support among college-educated whites than they do among minorities. In a piece about this phenomenon for Axios, Josh Kraushaar writes:

Shifts in the demographics of the two parties supporters taking place before our eyes are arguably the biggest political story of our time

Democrats are statistically tied with Republicans among Hispanics on the generic congressional ballot, according to a New York Times-Siena Collegepollout this week. Dems held a47-point edge with Hispanics during the 2018 midterms

Democratic strategists say the partys biggest vulnerability is assuming that the priorities of progressive activists are the same as those of working-class voters.

So whats going on here? Over at his Substack site, Ruy Teixeira takes a look at some recent data from Echelon Insights which strongly suggests a small but noisy group of strong progressives who tend to be white and college educated are setting the tone for the Democratic Party, but that tone is turning off a lot of blue collar people including many Hispanic voters. Look at this data and see if you dont recognize the people who make up this strong progressive group:

2.Racism is built into our society, including into its policies and institutions vs. Racism comes from individuals who hold racist views, not from our society and institutions. Strong progressives are very, very sure of Americas systemic racism, endorsing the first statement by an amazing 94-6 margin. But Hispanics disagree, endorsing the second statement that racism comes from individuals by 58-36, as do working class voters by 57-33

4.Transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity vs. Transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender. Strong progressives overwhelmingly endorse allowing athletes to play on the sports team that matches their gender identity by 66-19. But Hispanic voters by 64-22 say athletes should only play on teams that match their birth gender; working class voters are almost identical at 63-22.

5.We need to reallocate funding from police departments to social services vs. We need to fully fund the budget for police departments. Strong progressives want to reallocate police funding by 87-12. In contrast, Hispanic voters want full funding of the police by 50-41 and working class voters are even stronger on full funding by 59-31.

Thats just 3 of the 6 questions Teixeira considers but the others are all similar. For instance, the last question is about upward mobility and the value of hard work. The strong progressives overwhelmingly dont believe hard work matters (88%) but a majority of blue collar workers and Hispanics (55% of each group) say it does.

Hopefully from the outlines of all this you recognize the type.These folks are still a small percentage of the electorate (about 10%) but they tend to be highly educated, white and very online. The so-called strong progressives are basically weve come to know as the woke left. They are on the far left of every one of these wedge issues and are probably on Twitter arguing about it. They are also way out of step with the country as a whole. For example, a recent poll of support for defunding the police (transferring money from police budgets to other priorities) showed it was down to 31% overall but in question 5 above the strong progressives support it at 87%.

So the impression you get from all of this is that the white, woke left has become if not the face of the Democratic Party at least its most strident voice. They have emphasized issues with which a majority of blue collar and Hispanic voters just disagree. And thats arguably what is driving the Great Realignment were seeing now.

If you look at what this means for the Democratic Party in any poll taken this year, its clearly a disaster. Democrats are poised to lose the House in a red wave and are still likely to lose the Senate, though thats a closer thing. The woke left probably hurt the party in 2020 election as well. Remember they were expected to gain seats in the House and wound up losing them instead.

Ive been struggling with whether to say it because it has become a clich on the right at this point, but based on the above the phrase get woke, go broke seems to apply. The Democratic Party has emboldened the woke left and now it looks like that has broken, or at least fractured, their long-standing coalition of minority groups. Theres no telling where that will go from here but in the near term it seems like its going to cost Democrats quite substantially.

Note: For those who dont recognize her, thats Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, in the photo above. I think she represents the white, woke movement were talking about here.

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The Great Realignment: Woke, white progressives are defining the ...

Given how skeptical many Democrats generally are of empowering law enforcement agencies with more authority or resources, their enthusiasm for spending $80 billion to bolster the Internal Revenue Service as part of the Inflation Reduction Act is odd.

Certainly, it makes sense that progressives would be excited about mobilizing an army of revenuers to make the rich pay their fair share. Nonetheless, such exuberance should at least be tempered given the agencys institutional tendency to target disadvantaged individuals and communities rather than lawyered-up millionaires and billionaires.

Perhaps sensing that an army of 87,000 new IRS agents (more than doubling the current workforce) might not be an inherently popular way to spend money during tough economic times, Democratic leadership has assured the American people that average middle-income Americans have nothing to fear.

Audits, we are told, wont increase in regularity for anyone making less than $400,000 per year.

Such an assurance would be more believable had those very same Democrats not torpedoed an attempt to codify such language in the bill. Ultimately, theres no reason to believe the IRSs expansion wont land more average Americans in the agencys crosshairs other than a few promises made by Democratic politicians facing a potentially brutal midterm election year.

And if we cant trust the word of politicians pandering for votes, what can we trust?

Of course, even tax the rich progressives ought to have enough political cynicism to doubt one of the nations most feared law enforcement agencies will use its new resources to laser focus exclusively on auditing Americas share of billionaires. After all, the Inflation Reduction Act changes none of the institutional or systemic deficiencies of the IRS it merely gives the agency more resources to enforce the same complex web of loophole-riddled tax law currently being gamed by the wealthy.

Indeed, we are now learning that the Joint Committee on Taxation has even estimated the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to increase taxes for households earning between $50,000 and $75,000, while households earning more than $1 million might actually get a tax break. (So much for sticking it to the rich.)

And beyond the potential for new taxes, according to the editors at The Wall Street Journal, the Joint Committee on Taxation also says 78 to 90 percent of the money raised from under-reported income money raised by all those new agents conducting audits will likely come from Americans earning less than $200,000.

None of this is terribly surprising, given the fact that the IRS routinely targets the poorest Americans at a rate similar to that of the top one percent. Lower income individuals, as it turns out, have less ability to contest such audits and are therefore easier targets for a law enforcement agency whose sole mission is to raise revenue.

Moreover, the tactics used by the IRS to recover what it determines to be under-reported income are already brutal and intimidating even when they arent employed against Americans struggling to cope in difficult economic times.

When the IRS determines an individual owes a sum of money, for example, that first dreaded letter in the mail is just the beginning of a nightmarish administrative process. Without a robust and expensive cadre of high-priced attorneys, most middle-and low-income Americans can quickly find liens placed on their property, bank accounts frozen and wages garnished punitive actions that are often taken long before anyone has a chance to substantively contest the charges or defend themselves in court.

And, unfortunately, targeting lower income workers is not likely to stop being a routine part of the IRS policing practice. For example, low-income households receiving certain tax credits or occupations that depend largely on cash tips are routinely investigated by an already ruthless and unresponsive army of revenuers. Its therefore not unreasonable to believe that adding a stadium-full of personnel to the department will merely accelerate the institutionalized methods of harassment and intimidation aimed at vulnerable Americans.

Which is why the progressive lefts applause for expanding such an agency seems like an egregious example of political cognitive dissonance especially given what staunch critics most progressives are of other efforts to bolster law enforcement budgets. Such support for the IRSs budgetary windfall is akin to the kind of blind support conservatives all too often give local police departments that promise to get tough on crime.

As a result, progressives who pride themselves on being skeptical of law enforcement should be just as dubious of the IRS expansion as the most conservative anti-tax crusaders making appearances on Fox News and talk radio. The nations top one percent, after all, will continue to have access to their own army of lawyers and accountants ready to wage war against a newly energized (and funded) IRS but the most disadvantaged among us will continue to be easy prey for the slew of federal agents hired to, quite literally, separate Americans from a portion of their hard-earned money.

Those 87,000 new IRS employees arent going to be sending out larger refunds to working-class Americans or ensuring individuals receive every tax break to which they are entitled. Instead, theyll be doing what the IRS has always done: Performing audits, launching investigations and garnishing wages. And low- and middle-income Americans will not magically be spared simply because a bunch of politicians made some promises while trying to court votes during an election year.

Believing such promises is as foolish as having believed in the 1970s that the war on drugs would only inconvenience cartels, criminals and addicts. Progressives, more than anyone else, should know better.

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding consultant based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He is the former communications director for Nevada Policy Research Institute and has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary as a columnist, political humorist, and radio talk show host. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.

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Yes, progressives also should be worried about 87,000 new IRS agents The Nevada Independent - The Nevada Independent

It took a couple weeks for The Narrative about the Biden era to change from a failed presidency to a consequential restorer of policy ambition. Despite containing about one-ninth of the domestic spending initially envisioned in the Build Back Better bill, the Inflation Reduction Acts $369 billion investment in energy production, climate mitigation and advanced manufacturing, along with the extension of the American Rescue Plans affordability measures for 12 million Affordable Care Act exchange customers and the beginnings of potentially significant prescription drug price reforms for seniors, was enough to rewrite the script.

But theres one more bill left on the table, the result of a side deal between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and the Democratic leadership. Blandly known as permitting reform, this initiative (which could not go into the IRA because it isnt budgetary in nature and therefore is ineligible for reconciliation) would, according to its supporters, accelerate timelines for energy projects nationwide by effectively shortening the time allotted for reviews. It is scheduled get a vote in the House and Senate by the end of September.

Its an interesting inversion of a dynamic that we saw last year. When Build Back Better was split between infrastructure and social spending, progressives helped pass the infrastructure bill based on a promise of a vote later on the spending package. What they eventually got took nearly a year and was quite watered down. Now its Manchin advancing the spending bill, based on a promise to get permitting reform.

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With the IRA done in the Senate and set to wrap this week in the House, progressive members have no reason to hold themselves to Manchins deal, and are free to assess whether permitting reform makes sense on the merits. It does not. If Manchin wants another victory for his favored fossil fuel industries, he should either get the Republicans he just backstabbed on board to do it, or give something more to Democrats in exchange.

Some progressive observers have talked themselves into the idea that permitting reform is necessary to speed up renewable energy projects. Such a mindset reflects a core tenet of supply-side progressivismthe idea that overzealous application of laws designed to restrict building need to be recalibrated.

Its a compelling yet misleading theory. Permitting is really about power, and if the entity wanting to build has enough, they can cut through red tape with little resistance. Less than ten years ago there was no such thing as an American oil export industry. Today the U.S. is the biggest oil and gas producer in the world, the sixth-largest exporter of oil, and the second-largest natural gas exporter. The entire architecture for that transformation had to be devised, permitted, approved, and builtand it was, with rapid speed, including thousands of wells, transportation infrastructure like roadways and pipelines, liquefied natural gas export terminals, and much more.

In fact, the sector wildly overbuilt in that decade, with investors losing so much money during the pandemic crash that they simply refuse to produce today, even with the current high prices. There are a lot of problems with the investor-driven oil and gas model, but permitting is not one of them; the industry literally got too much done.

In other words, if theres money to be made, and particularly if you couch it as a national security imperative, permitting problems have a knack for melting away. Ultimately, that is the likely path for renewables: The IRA creates a massive market for the deployment of solar and wind and other innovations, and environmental reviews are unlikely to derail that swiftly moving train. Moreover, the idea that the National Environmental Policy Act will unfairly hold back the green transition is just massively overstated as a problem beyond random anecdotes. Just one out of every 450 NEPA reviews are challenged in court, and federal agencies win at around the same level as they do in other environmental cases.

In the case of a couple of pipelines, its true, residents directly affected in disastrously toxic ways have been able to get the legal system to agree that their lives arent worth sacrificing to oncoming pipelines. That includes the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a Manchin priority that would deliver 2 billion cubic feet of fracked gas per day from West Virginia to Virginia, equivalent to 25 new coal plants. Appalachian residents bitterly oppose the project, in some cases physically blocking the pipelines path.

The permitting reform bill, which we know little about save for a one-page summary courtesy of The Washington Post, could also be called the complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline bill. In fact thats an entire section of the one-pager, which requires immediate action from federal regulators to approve the project and strips future legal jurisdiction away from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appealswhich has consistently blocked the pipeline because of impacts on endangered wildlife, pristine forest, and human healthand shifts it to the D.C. Circuit, which often sides with federal agencies in these matters.

Even this doesnt assure Mountain Valleys completion, as it wouldnt exempt the project from environmental laws. But the venue-shopping for a friendly circuit court should take care of those challenges. And Manchins special pleading for Mountain Valley reinforces how permitting isnt a problem as long as you have powerful friends.

Elsewhere, the one-pager compresses the time allotted to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews to between one and two years, streamlines Clean Water Act reviews and certification, coordinates interagency reviews with a project lead, forces the president to set a list of 25 high-priority infrastructure projects of all types under various criteria (reducing energy costs, expanding energy trade, and potential for decarbonization), and forces agencies to act quickly on court challenges.

The deal gives Democrats who are disinclined to gutthe permitting process some leverage.

All of these things could be done tomorrow with no legislation, and surely would be done (practically every administration talks about faster project approvals) if the resources were made available. If you want to improve permitting, dont weaken the laws, writes Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. To move with agility, strengthen agency culture to provide for creative, agile decision-making and provide agency staff resources to act.

Instead, this bill creates a countdown for permitting reviews that probably cannot be achieved. While there is some funding for NEPA implementation in the IRA, crashing down the timelines would raise the monetary need to a level that isnt provided. Depending on the language of the permitting reforms, either the timelines will remain exactly the same because of the lack of state capacity, or the timelines will just cut off reviews before theyre adequately completed, force corner-cutting, and heighten the possibility for errors or oversights. That will be exploited, at least at first, by fossil fuel interests. And once that infrastructure is built, it will be supremely difficult to dislodge in future years, weakening the climate benefits by drawing out the green transition timeline.

This is part of what has oil and gas interests pleased with the IRA and its companion. But green groups, which have been enthusiastic about the IRA, arent on board with permitting reforms. The Sierra Club, which has fought to shut down coal plants for years, has savaged the deal, as did Earthjustice.

Other than the one-pager, there is no bill text for something that must be done in the short period when Congress returns in September. Schumer wants to attach it to a continuing resolution to fund the government, to jam it down the throats of Democrats who may not agree with permitting deregulation, but who dont want to see the government shut down.

Thats clever, but also gives Democrats who are disinclined to gutof the permitting process some leverage. If permitting is to be accelerated, it would have to be fully funded, by definition. That should be insisted upon. Or maybe progressives have something else in mind to serve as the price for their vote. Without some concession, there is no need to break environmental laws and threaten communities.

Republicans would presumably be interested in deregulation and could supply enough votes to power this through (it would need 60 votes in the Senate anyway, so Republicans will be critical to the outcome). But as they spent a week holding a temper tantrum over Manchins alleged betrayal on the IRA, they may not be in a forgiving mood. Anyway, we know what they want: Last week, Senate Republicans got Manchin to agree to overturn a rule forcing consideration of climate change in NEPA rulemaking. That rule change wont pass the House on its own, but to get Republican votes for permitting reform, something similar is likely to be the ask.

Progressives generally got rolled in the Build Back Better process, and they were always going to get rolled, because of the need for that final 50th vote from Manchin (and Kyrsten Sinema). The permitting bills dynamic is different. It may pass anyway in a bargain between oil industry-backed Democrats and Republicans. But as they werent party to the deal, theres no reason for progressives to participate in that process. And theres good reason for them to hold out for better terms. The Democratic leadership made the deal, so they can find the votes for it.

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Permitting Reform Bill Flips Leverage to Progressives - The American Prospect

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