Here’s a Good One: I.R.S. Budget “Pays for Itself”

The Dubya Squad’s budget for 2006 is going to include a big boost to the IRS’s budget — 7.8% over the previous year, or half a billion dollars.

The IRS argues that with more money it can enforce the tax law better, shaking down more people, so that, as IRS Commissioner Mark Everson puts it, “Enforcement more than pays for itself.”

Which makes me wonder if people who work for the IRS are especially susceptible to myths about perpetual motion machines… Since the IRS is really planning on using money it takes from us to pay for its efforts to take even more money from us, “pays for itself” is not how I would have put it. As far as I can see, we pay for it twice.

A while back I noted that the CIA was claiming it didn’t have to divulge any information about the people it tortures — Freedom of Information Act be damned — because it is, after all, a secret organization.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein disagrees. So the ACLU may have some more documents to share with us before too long.