GOP Congressman Calls for the IRS to Be Shuttered and the Constitution to Be Amended Amid Report Trump Is Targeting Left-Wing Groups
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) called for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to be completely abolished when asked about President Donald Trump reportedly planning an “overhaul” of the agency.
Davidson joined CNN’s John Berman on Thursday morning and wrapped up his interview by pushing for the IRS to close after Berman asked about a Wall Street Journal report on Trump’s plans for the agency.
According to the Journal:
The Trump administration is preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily, according to people familiar with the matter.
A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, some of the people said.
Berman noted the report and played a clip for Davidson of the president in 2019 vowing that he would never allow the IRS to be used as a “political weapon” against his opponents.
Davidson took things a step further by suggesting the way to keep the IRS from ever being used as a weapon is to just burn it down. He currently has an amendment to do away with the 16th Amendment, which allowed Congress to tax income, altogether.
The congressman said:
I’m rooting for the IRS to be closed. I’ve got a constitutional amendment to repeal the 16th Amendment. I think it’s a in massive invasion of privacy to collect all this information from citizens in the first place. And so I hope we’ve completely repeal the 16th amendment and fully close the IRS. You know, we’ve got lemons. Democrats have chosen to shut the government down. The Trump administration’s making lemonade and one of the areas that we’ve cut is the IRS. And so I think there’s a lot of dead weight there and a lot people involved in things that really are outside the purview of collecting the revenue for the country. We saw this going back to the [Barack] Obama administration with Lois Lerner and others. So it’s an agency that can be weaponized and I think those kinds of agencies should just go away.
Watch above via CNN.
