edthecynic
Censored for Cynicism
- Oct 20, 2008
- 43,044
- 6,883
- 1,830
And if by "quibbled" you mean totally annihilated the GOP's phony made up number, then you would be correct. So when you back out all the overhead, support personal, raises, etc., you get at most 1,000 new "agents" using the $10 billion CBO guess and 500 using the $5 billion CBO Guess, not all of whom will be involved in the ACA.
From your link:
So where does the claim of 16,500 new agents come from?
Starting with a Soft Figure
This figure originated with a report put out by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee on March 18. It said:GOP Analysis, March 18: IRS may need to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents and other employees.
Notice the words "may" and "as many as." This is the highest figure the GOP analysts thought they could support. Notice also the phrase "other employees," which covers everyone down to file clerks and support staff.
The analysts based their 16,500 figure on an assumption that the IRS budget "could" require an additional $10 billion over the next 10 years as a result of the law, a figure they attribute to the Congressional Budget Office. But what CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf actually said in a March 11 letter to congressional leaders is this (with emphasis added):
CBO Director Elmendorf, March 11: CBO has not completed an estimate of all of the discretionary costs that would be associated with H.R. 3590.
uch costs would probably include an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years for administrative costs of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Note the words "probably" and "could." And the figure based on preliminary analysis could as easily be $5 billion as the $10 billion number the GOP analysts used.
False Assumptions
The GOP analysts then inflated their estimate by making a couple of false assumptions.No desks? First, they assume that all the new "administrative" spending projected by CBO would go for payroll and benefits without any allowance for desks, computers, office rent, utilities, travel or other overhead costs necessary to run any government enterprise. The partisan analysts simply divided the spending (which they figured could be $1.5 billion per year once the law is fully effective) by the current average payroll cost for the entire IRS workforce.
To their credit, the GOP analysts admitted this shortcoming, saying their figure "does not include other costs that would be incurred, including office overhead." In fact, they said: "There would be some additional overhead costs for the new employees, such as computers and telephone services." Adjusting for that, they said, the number of new workers implied by the CBO guesstimate would be 11,800.
No pay raises? The second false assumption is that there will be no inflation or pay raises over the next decade. They apply fiscal 2009 cost figures to budgets for 2014 through 2019. In fact, CBO currently projects that the Employment Cost Index will rise 1.4 percent next year and reach 3 percent per year in 2015 and thereafter. Even if the partisan analysis is valid, that would further reduce the maximum number that could be hired by another 1,000 in 2014, and by about 2,800 in 2019, by our calculations.
The GOP analysts assume that the $10 billion would not be spread evenly over the decade, but would reach $1.5 billion annually in later years. Thats reasonable, given that major provisions of the new law dont take effect until 2014. But even accepting that, the peak figure could just as easily be $750 million a year, if the CBOs lower guess proves to be correct. So the number of new IRS workers implied by the GOPs own logic could be closer to 5,000 than to 16,500, after adjusting for overhead costs and inflation.
And the fact is, whatever the number of new employees turns out to be, relatively few would be "agents" or otherwise working in enforcement.
Employees vs. "Agents"
The GOP staff analysis projected only the number of new "employees," but some Republican lawmakers immediately misrepresented the findings by claiming that all the new workers would be "agents." GOP Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan stated in a press release that "Up to 16,500 New IRS Agents" would be required. And hes not the only one making such a claim. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said on "Fox News Sunday" on March 21 that the IRS would get "16,000 agents to police this new mandate." In a March 25 speech on the Senate floor, Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada said: "And 16,500 new IRS agents are going to be required to be hired because of the health care reform bill. Do we want IRS agents showing up at peoples houses, not only to audit them because of their taxes but because now they are not paying an individual mandate fine?"But theres a huge difference between an IRS revenue agent who calls on taxpayers and conducts face-to-face audits and the workers who make up the bulk of IRS employees. Those who work at the IRS include clerks, accountants, computer programmers, telephone help line workers and other support staff. In fact, IRS revenue agents make up only 15 percent of the IRS workforce, according to the official IRS personnel summary. It shows that of the 93,337 employees the IRS had on board as of the end of the last fiscal year (September 31, 2009) only 14,264 were actually working as revenue agents. Even adding in "revenue officers" (who collect money owed) and "special agents" (who handle criminal cases and are law-enforcement officers) the total working in the enforcement area comes to less than 25 percent of all IRS workers.
Rep. Camp should know that hes the senior Republican member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS. This misrepresentation of the inflated "employee" figure has since been picked up and repeated by countless conservative blogs and news sites. But however often it is repeated, it is still false.
