Expectations that Democrats will ram through their latest spending bill today in the House are drawing attention to the plan to give the IRS $80 billion to hire a massive army of 87,000 agents.
A Secrets report this week that the agency is hiring armed special agents and telling them that they should be ready to use “deadly force” against their targets has put a spotlight on IRS policing in the country, raising questions about what they do and just how armed the agents are.
Americans for Tax Reform just issued a report trying to answer those questions.
Citing audits and a report from OpenTheBooks on arms spending by over 100 federal agencies, many with their own police forces, Americans for Tax Reform said that even before spending a dime of the new money, the IRS already has an arsenal of 4,600 firearms and 5 million rounds of ammunition.
It’s no surprise that the IRS has an armed police force. In fact, it has a storied history of dangerous investigations, including seizing Al Capone and solving the Lindbergh kidnapping. Today the agency is deeply engaged in fraud, tax evasion, terrorist financing, and narcotics trafficking.
The details of its arms cache, and the likelihood that it will surely grow with the new spending, show how well armed it is.
From fiscal years 2015-2019, the IRS ranked eighth among “general and administrative” agencies in arms, equipment, and ammunition spending at $8,697,142, according to the OpenTheBooks report.
That included $855,000 on Glock 19 handguns and $3.5 million on ammunition. It preferred .40-caliber Glocks, Smith & Wesson and H&K AR-15s, and Remington shotguns for its more than 2,000 special agents.
The report said the agency also purchased “hitman suits,” though no explanation was provided.
The IRS is just one of over 100 agencies with an arms budget. Overall, the federal government spent more than $2 trillion in the last decade on guns and ammunition, according to a 2020 OpenTheBooks report on the militarization of the federal government.
* Article from: The Washington Examiner
