$26.8 billion. That's how much the House GOP's proposal to fund $14 billion in aid to Israel could add to the deficit over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed today.
As I wrote yesterday, the proposal floats cutting $14.3 billion of the $80 billion that was allocated to the enforcement division of the IRS as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats counted as a major win (though $20 billion of that was later cut in a deal to raise the debt ceiling).
The GOP now wants to re-route that $14.3 billion to pay for weapons and "military education and training" for Israel for use in its ongoing war with Hamas, a move that would, in turn, drain an estimated $12.5 billion from the IRS as a result of lessened enforcement resources, according to the CBO analysis released today.
As IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told the Washington Post, that cost would come from reduced audits of the wealthy and corporations.
So, to recap, this instance of "Republican math" amounts to $14.3 billion put toward Israel's war effort + $12.5 billion in lost tax revenue from wealthy tax cheats and financial crimes = $26.8 billion added to the deficit. Meanwhile, the CBO previously estimated the increased funding for IRS enforcement would reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion.
But to newly crowned House Speaker Mike Johnson, the simple addition put forth by his own party doesn't quite add up. "Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit," he said.
To my colleague David Corn, the GOP proposal essentially amounts to "letting billionaires cheat to pay for bombs to drop on civilians." The Biden administration seems to agree. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the proposal as an effort to help “the wealthy and big corporations cheat on their taxes” to fund the war aid to Israel as “the definition of backwards."
(Though Biden, for what it's worth, requested the same amount of aid to Israel as the House GOP. The CBO doesn't have a cost estimate based on Biden's request.)
And while we've focused on the impacts on American taxpayers here, let's not forget that it's civilians—more than 8,800 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis, according to Gaza health authorities and Israeli officials, respectively—who are ultimately paying the price of this war. —Julianne McShane
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