Ted Cruz sees IRS agents, everywhere

Would-be president Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has proved again that he has only a passing acquaintance with truth. This time around it's about the IRS. Which he believes should be abolished. "There are 110,000 agents at the IRS," he says. "We need to put a padlock on that building and take every one of those 110,000 agents and put them on our southern border."

And how many IRS agents are there, really?

According to the IRS's most recent budget request, which the administration submitted in February, Congress has enacted budget authority for only 82,203 total employees in the current fiscal year, which runs through Sept. 30. That's down from 84,761 total workers last fiscal year (as measured by the usual "full-time equivalent," or FTE, standard).

And of those 82,000, only about one in four can properly be called "agents," or even "revenue officers."

Which would be, like, 16,000 IRS agents. Which is quite a few, but also quite a few less than Cruz believes in. When asked about where Cruz gets his information, a spokesman said it was from a report by the Treasury Department's inspector general. A report that, of course, reports the correct number of IRS employees. But really, the flack says,"Sen. Cruz was clearly making a joke to convey the point [that all IRS workers] are engaged in one mission: collecting taxes under a tax code that is too complex, too costly, and unfair to the American taxpayer."

Sen. Ted Cruz and the facts. That's definitely a joke.