Right-wingers starve the IRS and then make up stories about why it can't collect taxes

Right-wingers like to make up stories about who's playing politics with the IRS. It's easier when you've bestowed upon yourself an unlimited license to lie.

by Ken

Throughout tax season we kept hearing horror stories about normal IRS help being unavailable to taxpayers, thanks to the ravages of right-wing budget-cutters. These are, of course, the liars and lunatics who spend their delusional waking hours railing against government waste. Tax collection, of course, isn't government waste. Properly funded, the IRS collects healthy multiples of the money it spends. And while none of us likes paying taxes, they're the price we pay for civilization -- and for the greatest country on earth these worthless slugs keep blithering about.

But are too cheap and thieving to pay for. As we know, they don't like taxes, and neither do the corporate overlords who put and keep them in office. So they make it impossible for the government to collect what it's owed, in order to keep functioning. Of course they don't like government either. Oh, many of the benefits they like fine, but even those they don't like paying for. So they concoct stories making Obamacare the villain. After all, to right-wingers the truth is the enemy. They believe Americans are entitled to the best lies money can buy.

Choose your image: the clowns taking over the circus, or the inmates taking over the asylum. Incredibly, brain-challenged voters have allowed these thieves, predators, and just plain morons not just a hand but a controlling hand in the running of our government. I say, they should all be indicted as part of the criminal conspiracy. I'm thinking death penalty.

Now we begin to get a proper reckoning of the job the scumbags did to cripple American society. The AP's Stephen Ohlemacher reports today, in "8 million phone calls to IRS went unanswered as agency diverted money from taxpayer services":

The IRS' overloaded phone system hung up on more than 8 million taxpayers this filing season as the agency cut millions of dollars from taxpayer services.

For those who weren't disconnected, only 40 percent actually got through to a person. Many of those people had to wait on hold for more than 30 minutes, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Wednesday.

A new staff report by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee says the IRS diverted millions from taxpayer services and other areas to pay for President Barack Obama's health law.

At a hearing Wednesday, Koskinen blamed budget cuts approved by Congress. The agency's budget has been cut by $1.2 billion since 2010.

"Customer service, both on the phone and in person has been much far worse than anyone would want," Koskinen told a Ways and Means subcommittee. "It's simply a matter of not having enough people to answer the phones and provide service at our walk-in sites as a result of cuts to our budget."

Koskinen said the agency is required by law to implement the health law, leaving him with few other places to cut. He said the agency requested a total of $600 million over the past two years for computer upgrades to implement the health law as well as a new law requiring foreign banks to report information about U.S. account holders.

"In both years the Congress gave us zero dollars so we had no choice but to look elsewhere," Koskinen said.

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