Bush cuts IRS attorney staff in order to help the wealthy and screw everyone else

Both Republicans and Democrats agree that our country is not in great fiscal shape, with GDP growth slowing, out-of-control spending in Congress and a budget deficit that is shrinking somewhat but still large. We have a war on terror, including our never-ending adventure in Iraq, that we cannot pay for, our health care system is a mess and homeland security funding is being cut in prime terrorist targets like New York City. And of course there's the post-Katrina reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, which will cost the government untold billions of dollars.

So the absolute height of fiscal irresponsibility, beside pushing to choke off government funding (in the form of massive tax cuts), would naturally seem to be taking actions that decrease the government's effectiveness in collecting the tax money we are still requiring the wealthy to pay. Of course, the Republicans are busy proving to the world that they are effective multi-taskers by accomplishing both of these things at the same time.

Discussing revelations from a recent article in the New York Times, the New Standard's Megan Tady explains exactly what is going on:

With a cut to the estate tax looking unlikely in Congress this year, the Bush administration is quietly planning to reduce the number of federal agents who enforce the tax. Critics are calling the move a "backdoor" repeal of the tax on extraordinary inheritances.

Through leaked internal agency documents, the New York Times discovered last week that the government plans to eliminate almost half of the Internal Revenue Service’s 345 lawyers who currently audit the tax returns of those subject to sharing a cut of their estate with the American public upon their deaths. The Times reported the staff reduction will be made within the next few months.

It gets worse...a lot worse:

[T]he IRS job cuts coincide with a nearly $100 million increase of tax-enforcement funding included in a newly approved Senate appropriations bill. Given the personnel cut, critics predict the IRS will use the enforcement increases to go after low- and middle-income taxpayers instead of investigating wealthy tax evaders.

A 2006 study already found this trend to be true: taxpayers reporting less than $25,000 in income were six times more likely to undergo IRS audits in 2005 than those reporting earnings of $200,000 or more, according to the public-interest group Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, affiliated with Syracuse University [. . .]

Estate-tax lawyers are the most productive tax-law enforcement staff at the IRS, finding an average of $2,200 of taxes owed but not paid to the government each hour that they work. The IRS says a significant amount of taxes are never collected from all taxpayers. The IRS reports that the gross tax gap -- the difference between what taxpayers are obligated to pay, and what they actually pay -- surpasses $300 billion every year.

So there you have it. Bush is so incredibly concerned with helping his wealthy campaign donors avoid paying their fair share of taxes that he's willing to sacrifice the revenue owed to the federal government from their tax obligations. Instead, he plans to go after the smaller amount of revenue owed by lower and middle class taxpayers. It's bad enough that Bush has massively cut the amount of taxes the wealthy need to pay; now he wants to further drain the treasury of funding by cutting back on collecting these revenues as well. It's all so regressive, immoral, irresponsible and frankly completely insane that you would expect most Americans would be outraged. I guess we'll find out in November just how much the citizens of this country actually care about our economy, the progressivity of our tax system and basic economic justice.