The House Republicans announced their
strategy for 2012, which amounts to basically anything but legislating to actually do stuff, like create jobs. Their agenda is a combination of symbolic bills to gut regulations, give tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, kill Medicare, and oversight hearings. Lots of oversight hearings.
For example:
House Republicans want the IRS to explain how it’s using the $500 million it received from another department to help implement President Obama’s healthcare law. [...]
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Oversight subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-La.) sought more information Wednesday about how the tax agency is using the funding.
“The American people deserve to know how and why this one-half billion in taxpayer dollars are being spent, and how many additional IRS agents, auditors and other workers are being hired to enforce all the hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and penalties in the Democrats’ health care law,” Camp and Boustany said.
They're looking for any proof of Rep. Michele Bachmann's fever dreams, where seven-foot doctors swear that
they can't see patients without approval from the IRS. Or the
zombie myth that the law will unleash 16,500 IRS agents to enforce it.
The reality? The Affordable Care Act provided a tax credit for small businesses who wanted to start offering their employees health insurance as one of the provisions that took effect immediately. Small business started claiming that credit at a good clip. The IRS is in charge of overseeing those tax credits. They'll also be in charge of administering the subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance when that provision goes into effect in a couple of years, and have to prepare for that implementation.
But you can't let reality get in the way of rumors from seven-foot doctors. Or politics.
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