Fox News pushed falsehood that the Inflation Reduction Act adds 87,000 new IRS employees more than 200 times – By Matt Gertz (Media Matters) / Aug 25, 2022
Network also falsely claimed new hires would all be armed in dozens of instances
Fox News has promoted the false claim that the Inflation Reduction Act adds 87,000 employees to the Internal Revenue Service at least 203 times since Senate Democrats announced the bill’s framework on August 5, according to a Media Matters review of the network’s programming. That false talking point fuels Fox’s incendiary smear that President Joe Biden is turning the IRS into a “new Gestapo” that will “hunt down and kill middle-class taxpayers.”
The IRA, which Biden signed into law on August 16, includes $80 billion over the next decade in additional funding for the IRS. A portion of those funds would support tougher tax enforcement targeted at Americans making more than $400,000, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would raise $204 billion. The net gain of $124 billion, along with prescription drug pricing reform and tax increases on billion-dollar corporations, helps the bill fund investments in clean energy and health care while also reducing the deficit by over $300 billion over 10 years.
Republicans and their right-wing media supporters oppose increased funding for the IRS; they prefer to hobble tax enforcement so that wealthy people can continue to cheat on their taxes with impunity. GOP politicians spent years defunding the tax police and have focused their IRA criticism on this provision, deceptively warning that the bill creates a “new army of 87,000 IRS agents” who “will be coming for you,” in the words of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Fox has played a key role in stoking right-wing ire against the IRS, including by spreading the false claim that the bill would lead to the hiring of 87,000 employees at least 203 times. The talking point has been commonplace both on “news side” programs like The Faulkner Focus (20 instances), America’s Newsroom (15), and America Reports (12), and on “opinion side” shows like Fox & Friends First (23 instances), Fox & Friends (16), The Ingraham Angle (15), Tucker Carlson Tonight (12), and Hannity (10). The purported 87,000 new hires were specifically described as “agents” at least 169 times.
