After the days-long, contentious voting marathon that finally placed the Speaker’s gavel in Kevin McCarthy’s hand, many liberal critics in the corporate media mockingly questioned whether the divided GOP caucus would be able to actually govern. The House Republicans appeared to answer that question last night. One of McCarthy’s first legislative actions after passing the rules for the chamber was to bring that gavel down on the head of the Internal Revenue Service. The GOP quickly passed a bill that would claw back $71 billion that the Democrats had showered on the IRS. To give us a preview of how the legacy media will be covering the new House majority, check out this cringeworthy summary from the Associated Press.

House Republicans began their tenure in the majority Monday by passing a bill that would rescind nearly $71 billion that Congress had provided the IRS, fulfilling a campaign promise even though the legislation is unlikely to advance further.

Democrats had beefed up the IRS over the next decade to help offset the cost of top health and environmental priorities they passed last year and to replenish an agency struggling to provide basic services to taxpayers and ensure fairness in tax compliance.

The money is on top of what Congress provides the IRS annually through the appropriations process and immediately became a magnet for GOP campaign ads in the fall claiming that the boost would lead to an army of IRS agents harassing hard-working Americans.

In the second paragraph of the article, the AP contradicts itself by saying the quiet part out loud. Democrats have been insisting that the IRS isn’t going to be going after middle-class workers or vacuuming up more of their earnings. But this article admits that they want more IRS agents to “offset the cost of top health and environmental priorities.” The plain language translation of that phrase tells you that they’re blowing a ton of money on COVID programs and the green energy debacle, so somebody is going to have to cover the tab. And the “somebody” in question will be you, courtesy of the tax man.

The AP follows that up with a sympathetic description of the IRS as being “an agency struggling to provide basic services to taxpayers.” Oh, really? Have any of you noticed the IRS being somehow unable to garnish your wages every payday?  I certainly haven’t.

Perhaps part of that $71 billion will be going to fund the agency’s arsenal of nearly 5,000 handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Those are all of the weapons that are supposedly needed by an army of accountants for some reason. If you don’t report every payment of $600 or more, you may be getting a pre-dawn visit by a group of bespectacled bean counters with AR-15s. Won’t that be fun?

One thing the article states correctly is that this bill will not advance any further or be passed into law. Why? Because, as the AP points out, “the Democratic-controlled Senate has vowed to ignore it.” Did you catch that? They’re not going to debate the bill. They’re not going to oppose the bill. Chuck Schumer is going to “ignore” it. And the Senate will be doing that to a lot of House legislation over the next two years. And even if the Senate did agree to vote on any items on the conservative agenda, Joe Biden won’t be signing any Republican priorities into law, despite his claims of wanting “bipartisanship” in the second half of his first term.

And yet, last night’s vote wasn’t meaningless. The voters narrowly gave the GOP the majority in the House and McCarthy’s caucus now needs to demonstrate to the base that they understand what the priorities are and they are capable of delivering. Sending this warning shot over the bow of the IRS was a good start. They will also need to launch and complete all of the investigations they promised us. That’s the only way the House GOP is going to inspire confidence in their capabilities and convince the country to also return the Senate to Republican control in 2024, and hopefully the White House as well.