Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) claimed that the IRS is going to force restaurants to host weddings with “drag queen story time for children” in a bizarre rant.
On her MTG Live broadcast on social media this week, Greene denounced the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that was just passed by the Senate that is funded partly through increased enforcement of the tax code.
Greene, like many Republicans, claimed that the bill would add 87,000 new IRS agents – a number that CBS News called “misleading” – and she said that those agents aren’t going to enforce tax law but are instead going to punish people for not being liberal enough.
“The Democrats want to hire 87,000 more IRS agents to, what, target conservatives!” Greene said. “Trump donors, Trump voters, Republicans, small business owners… I don’t know, if you refuse to bake a cake for some five-year-old’s coming out party with their new gender reveal.”
“They’re going to target you! They’re going to target you if you refuse to host a wedding in your restaurant for, I don’t know, who knows, with a drag queen story time for children, whatever, they’re going to target you because they hate you. You’re the political enemy.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed Democrats will use IRS agents to “target” Trump supporting restaurant owners who refuse to host “drag queen story time for children” weddings. pic.twitter.com/UweB8HipEK
— PatriotTakes (@patriottakes) August 11, 2022
Despite decades of Republican branding as the “law and order” party, many GOP elected officials have spoken out against giving the IRS resources to go after tax cheats. A statement from Republican leaders earlier this week said that the new IRS agents will “audit Walmart shoppers.”
The Department of Treasury has said that the new funding will be used to “crack down on tax evaders among the wealthy and large corporations, invest in technology upgrades that help taxpayers, and hire more customer support staff to prevent backlogs.”
Budget cuts at the IRS have cut its enforcement staff by 30% since 2010, and the risk of getting audited is a fraction of what it was a decade ago. The amount of tax revenue the federal government loses to tax cheating is estimated to be around $400 billion a year.
