Connecticut GOP U.S. Senate candidate Leora Levy observed Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) mockery of Americans expressing concern over Joe Biden’s creation of 87,000 new IRS Agents in his legislation that will increase taxes on middle-income Americans and do nothing to reduce inflation.
“I think the IRS is going to target the highest-income Americans,” Blumenthal recently said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” dismissing current concerns over the Inflation Reduction Act. “As the saying goes, that’s where the money is. That’s where they’re going to look to collect. The idea that there’s going to be this army of IRS agents descending on the average American is just preposterous.”
Responding to Blumenthal’s ridicule of the concern in a press release, Levy’s campaign stated, “Biden-Blumenthal inflation is hurting Connecticut, and this latest behemoth spending package is another example of Democrats putting extremist Progressive policies over the well-being of the American people.”
Levy explained further:
Biden pledged to not raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year, but he played to special interests and broke that promise, and Blumenthal went right along with him. Blumenthal voted to raise taxes on all middle-class Americans! We will also see higher energy costs, reduced 401ks, 30,000 fewer private sector jobs, and reduced manufacturing and production of goods in America as this bill targets American companies. Even more outrageous, Blumenthal laughs off the fact that the bill creates 87,000 new IRS agents set on shaking down the American people. It’s clear that career politicians like Dick Blumenthal fight for special interests instead of the people. It’s time for new leadership, and I promise to be a voice for Connecticut families, for all American families, small business owners and taxpayers, for the American People against the entrenched interest in Washington, D.C.
The Donald Trump-backed Levy won the Republican primary last week and will face far-left career Democrat Blumenthal in the general election in November.
“This week, Dick Blumenthal once again rubber-stamped Biden’s out-of-touch agenda, supporting ‘The Manchin-Sinema Build Back Inflation Better Act’ or as the Democrats misrepresent it: ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ which will cost Americans more – from increased energy prices to a hit on working Americans’ 401ks,” Levy’s campaign stated.
Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) released a statement August 4 in which he confirmed the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the Manchin-Schumer “Inflation Reduction Act” will do nothing to curb inflation.
“According to CBO analysis, the proposal’s effect on inflation is negligible at best,” Graham said. “The estimate ranges from reducing inflation by 0.1 percent to increasing it by 0.1 percent in the near term. The idea that this tax and spend proposal is going to blunt inflation is yet again rejected, this time by CBO. Democratic statements about the proposal are quite frankly wrong and misleading.”
“Further, CBO indicates that the Obamacare subsidies can go to a family of four earning $304,000 a year,” the senator explained further. “This is, by any reasonable definition, people who are doing well and not in need of subsidies from the government. Also, CBO confirmed my suspicion that the way the 15 percent corporate minimum tax is constructed would hurt economic growth.”
“So what have we learned today from CBO? The bill does not lower inflation, it hurts economic growth and the Obamacare subsidies are absurd,” Graham asserted.
Blumenthal called Americans’ concern over the massive enlargement of the IRS “preposterous,” but the Washington Examiner recalled the huge IRS scandal during the Obama era that was also denied.
The Examiner reported that, in October 2017, the IRS “signed a consent decree in federal court in which it admitted to targeting conservative organizations for more than two years, from 2010 through 2013.”
While former President Barack Obama “took no action, and his handpicked IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, simply stonewalled congressional investigations,” the notorious Lois Lerner, who headed the scandal-ridden IRS unit accused of targeting conservatives, “retired with a full pension, and no disciplinary action was taken against any IRS employee,” the Examiner observed.
According to the report, with no accountability for the actions of Lerner and others in government, the IRS simply confessed:
… its treatment of [conservative organizations] during the tax-exempt determinations process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding of some Plaintiffs’ information that TIGTA [U.S. Treasury Inspector General, Tax Administration] determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong.
Grocery store prices are SURGING and Blumenthal voted to RAISE taxes on the middle class during a recession!
37 years in office and career politicians like Blumenthal still don’t get it. #InflationReductionAct #CTSen https://t.co/NFx0VcLUrn
— Leora Levy (@LeoraLevyCT) August 13, 2022
Levy said for over three decades Blumenthal has served as a “rubber stamp for every Biden-Pelosi policy that is failing our country and our state.”
“There are countless families worried about how they are going to feed their families, pay the mortgage, and heat their homes this winter,” she asserted. “Joe Biden created these rising prices, and Dick Blumenthal has done nothing to fix it. Dick’s vote will make things worse for Connecticut yet again.”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Leora Levy” by Leora Levy. Photo “Richard Blumenthal” by Sage Ross. CC BY-SA 4.0. Background Photo “Internal Revenue Service Federal Building” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
