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I make it no secret that I despise the IRS. It has been less a tool of funding our country, and more a cudgel to punish political enemies, dependent upon which side is in charge of the governmental branches. So, the moves that the new GOP House of Representatives is making are steps in the right direction: DeFund, and DeFang.

Since the 1913 ratification of the 16th Amendment, Congress has had the power to lay and collect taxes on income from whatever sources it was derived from, and with every progressive president (thank you, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt), we have seen more invasive taxes and “professional collectors” exacting the usury. With Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act now law, $80 billion in new funding for the IRS, which would help expand the agency once again to incorporate 87,000 new agents, was slated to become a reality.

This is one of the reasons why Republicans took the House. The American people are sick and tired of their pocketbooks being raided, and the House of Representatives, which holds the power of the purse, not doing anything to “represent” their interests and stop it. So far, the GOP is actually living up to what they promised, passing H.R. 23: the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act, which directs any “unobligated balances of amounts appropriated or otherwise made available” to the IRS from the Inflation Reduction Act be rescinded.

That would be $72 billion of that $80 billion going, bye bye!

That’s the DeFund part.

The DeFang part came through on Tuesday, with Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter reintroducing his Fair Tax Act, to repeal the national income tax and create a flat tax administered by the states.

My colleagues here at RedState see little value in these bold moves, save for posture and theater.

Jeff Charles had this to say:

In the latest political theatrical production, the actors and actresses of the House Republican Theater Troupe have donned their costumes, applied their makeup, and sauntered onto the stage to pretend like they care about the welfare of their constituents. The title of this play is “Let’s Abolish the IRS” and it has already been greeted with fanfare and enthusiasm among the conservative chattering class.

[…]

The notion that the IRS could be dismantled has excited those on the right end of the political spectrum while terrifying those on the state-loving left.

But not everyone is enthused by this development, believing this performance is just that: Political theater intended to titillate the masses. It is being panned as yet another disingenuous effort to pander to the Republican base and conservative movement without actually having to do something to earn their precious votes.

Colleagues Brandon Morse and Bonchie are also of the same mind:

The Republican version of bread and circuses. https://t.co/TRdu66v0y6

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) January 10, 2023

Yeah, it's theater. But it's also not just some random repeal bill, though. It's the Fair Tax, a long-held conservative plan that is finally getting a real vote. Things getting votes give them publicity and there can be value in that.

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 11, 2023

I wholeheartedly disagree with Brandon and Jeff, but lean closer to Bonchie’s take. However, it goes far beyond publicity. If publicity alone were the driver, then Ron Paul’s “fringe” idea of abolishing the Federal Reserve should have gotten more steam years ago.

For those born after 1987, Ron Paul is the now less-famous father of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who also served as a U.S. Congressman from Texas for 20 years and ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988, and as a Republican in 2008 and 2012. Paul preached Fed abolishment, focused his House bills and political campaigns around it, and is still vocal about the excesses and failure of the Fed today.

With the horrible performances of both Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellin, it’s an idea whose time has finally come. But Paul’s formula is finally being employed by the GOP House: Identify the problem, keep the problem at the forefront, embed it in the minds of Americans, and then give them a roadmap on how to solve the problem. If the new GOP House is good for anything, it should be good for that.

The Fair Tax Act, the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act, and bills just like them are a continual drip, drip, drip that we need to employ over the next two years, because ultimately, it will produce erosion. The problem in years past is that we lacked a Congress (and Republican Speakers of the House) who had balls enough to keep pushing these bills, regardless of whether they would receive Senate consideration or presidential signature.

Just as the COVID-19 lockdowns blew the whole Zoom Educational Complex wide open and changed the trajectory of not only what the teachers unions wanted to do to our children, but of school boards across the country; so, this focus on the IRS, what it is, and what it is not doing for We the People, could transform Americans’ viewpoint on its necessity–and could well empower us to more action in order to bring this country back into alignment with what the founders intended.

The IRS was nowhere in the makeup. The states were designed to fund the federal government, and the boundaries on the federal government were supposed to be kept tight. Now, we have Yellin and Powell playing Chicken Little, in order to force a higher debt ceiling and continue to feed the behemoth of globalism.

Remember, all the school curriculum and school board action started with the grassroots. First, the local and state government stooges resisted, then they maligned and outright attacked parents—until they couldn’t. This could happen with the IRS, and now is the perfect time to take advantage.

Encourage your elected officials to keep stoking that fire, and look for ways your states can continue to defund what gets funneled federally. If you cannot slay the beast, starving it works just as well.