Republicans are planning on halting the Internal Revenue Service's funding at $11.2 billion in the their 2017 spending bill, the Washington Examiner reports.
According to a summary of the bill given to the Examiner by the House Appropriations Committee, the IRS' funding will allocate "sufficient resources to perform its core duties," such as the same amount as last year, $2.1 billion, for taxpayer services.
"The IRS has been plagued in recent years by the inappropriate actions of its employees and political leadership, resulting in the waste of taxpayer dollars and in unjust treatment and targeting of certain ideological groups," the committee said, according to the Examiner.
In March, 48 Democrats sent a letter to Appropriations urging the committee to increase the IRS budget to $12.9 billion next October.
"An increase in funding for the IRS will reverse the short-sighted and damaging budget cuts which have increased our national debt, left the IRS ill-equipped to combat refund errors and fraud, drastically reduced taxpayer services, dangerously reduced audits, and limits the IRS's ability to implement new laws passed by Congress," wrote Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., in the letter, according to The Washington Post.
"I was particularly surprised that at looking at the IRS numbers that the IRS head count has gone down quite dramatically, almost 30 percent over the last number of years," he added.
"I don't think there's any other government agency that has gone down 30 percent, and especially for an agency that collects revenues, this is . . . something that I'm concerned about."
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