Republicans are spreading lies...again.

The MoJo Daily newsletter, Monday through Friday. [View in browser]( [Mother Jones Daily Newsletter](     August 25, 2022 If you aim to mislead people, as every good propagandist knows, you take a kernel of truth, add a fistful of exaggeration—perhaps even an outright lie—sprinkle with a dash of populist outrage, and voila: viral misinformation! Donald Trump is a master of this dark art, and congressional Republicans are no slouches, either. They’re in positions of public trust, so if they all repeat basically the same thing, it has to be true, right? Wrong. And not just wrong, but dangerous. Take the recent outburst of GOP fearmongering over the roughly $80 billion of new IRS funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act. One kernel of truth came from a [May 2021 Treasury report](, which estimated that such an investment would enable the tax agency to hire nearly 87,000 staff over 10 years. Another kernel came from an IRS job listing for special agents trained to handle firearms and use deadly force if necessary—cops, in other words. These were ideal ingredients for the Republican propaganda machine. Suddenly, a who’s who of GOP lawmakers was tweeting that the evil Democrats were about to unleash 87,000 “new agents” (many armed!) to go after law-abiding middle-class taxpayers. That would get me riled up, too, if only it were true. But as I explained in [a recent post](, these claims were largely what Col. Potter from TV’s M.A.S.H. would have called “Horse hockey!” The 87k estimate is accurate enough, but that number accounts for all IRS staff positions and replacement hires over a decade—the taxman has lots of turnover. In reality, [just a fraction]( of IRS personnel are “agents” and, as of 2021, only 2.5 percent (2,042 people) were special agents authorized to pack firearms—a wise choice, perhaps, when confronting [money launderers and drug kingpins](. The mendacious Republican lawmakers—some of whom also called for defunding or abolishing the FBI after its agents searched Mar-a-Lago—have put people’s lives in danger. An Ohio man clad in body armor, who had apparently called upon “patriots” to murder federal agents, [tried to breach]( the FBI’s Cleveland office. Some MAGA militia types proclaimed on Tik-Tok that it was “go time”—one heavily armed man said he was “[getting ready for my IRS audit](.” On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that right-wing threats had prompted IRS administrators to launch [a security review](. All thanks to Republican horse hockey. As I explained in [a post]( last year, Republican lawmakers have been waging war on the IRS since at least 1994. They have called for its abolition and impugned its leadership and staff in dog-and-pony-show [hearings](. After winning back Congress in 2010, they gutted its enforcement budget, depriving the agency of staff and expertise required to conduct complex audits of ultra-wealthy taxpayers and their deliberately opaque business partnerships. From 2010 to 2017, audit rates plummeted across the board, but among the biggest beneficiaries were people with net taxable incomes of more than $1 million. Their audit rates dropped by 73 to 78 percent. Only people making $200,000 to $500,000 fared better, with an 82 percent decline in audits. The goal of the new funding, according to the Treasury Department, is to update obsolete IRS technology, provide better customer service, and restore the agency’s ability to scrutinize America’s top earners—people making $400,000 and up. Now, it’s debatable whether the super-rich are more prone to cheating on their taxes than the rest of us—they enjoy so many [legal tax breaks](, after all. But someone still need check up on them, because when the cat’s away... The IRS, to be sure, is the easiest of easy targets. Not even its own mother loves it. But Republicans seem to have miscalculated with their latest lie—miscasting the Biden administration’s student debt relief this week as a bailout of America’s “elite” by the working class. Not only is that claim demonstrably false, as [I pointed out here](, it’s also not a good look for the party that slashed rich people’s taxes in 2017 and was all in on the [forgiveness of pandemic loans](—which mainly helped bail out Americans who needed it least. What has heartened me, though, is the outpouring on social media today from people who struggled, but ultimately succeeded, in paying off their own student loans. Instead of complaining that Biden’s loan forgiveness was unfair to people like them, they were happy others would be relieved of that burden. That’s a kind and healthy attitude—one Republican leaders might think about adopting. Happy Thursday, —Michael Mechanic Advertisement [Mother Jones House Ad]( [Top Story] [Top Story]( [No, the IRS Is Not Hiring 87,000 New Agents to Go After Ordinary Taxpayers]( But wealthy tax cheats may have to watch their backs. BY MICHAEL MECHANIC [Trending] [The Republicans are lying (quite pathetically) about student debt forgiveness.]( BY MICHAEL MECHANIC   [Texas' attorney general thinks you should be nearly dead to qualify for an abortion. A judge just agreed.]( BY RUTH MURAI   [Breonna Taylor is dead because cops lied. One finally pleaded guilty.]( BY SAMANTHA MICHAELS   [Dozens of environmental groups ask EPA to crack down on fossil-fuel appliances]( BY EMILY PONTECORVO Advertisement [Mother Jones House Ad]( [Special Feature] [Special Feature]( [Pre-K Went Virtual During the Pandemic. For Some, It May Stay That Way.]( Online early childhood programs are taking off—but educators have doubts. 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