Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said on Thursday he thinks the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should “just go away” since it can be used by both parties to target political opponents.
“I’m rooting for the IRS to be closed. I’ve got a constitutional amendment to repeal the 16th Amendment. I think it’s a massive invasion of privacy to collect all this information from citizens in the first place. And so I hope we completely repeal the 16th Amendment and fully close the IRS,” Davidson said in an interview on “CNN News Central.”
CNN’s John Berman asked Davidson about a new Wall Street Journal report that the Trump administration is preparing “sweeping changes” to allow the IRS “to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily,” citing unidentified sources.
Davidson said the Trump administration is just “making lemonade” from the government shutdown, accusing the Obama administration of similarly targeting its Republican opponents.
“Look, we’ve got lemons. Democrats have chosen to shut the government down. The Trump administration is making lemonade, and one of the areas that we’ve cut is the IRS,” Davidson said.
“I think there’s a lot of dead weight there, and a lot of people involved in things that really are outside the purview of collecting the revenue for the country,” he continued. “We saw this going back to the Obama administration and with Lois Lerner and others.”
“It’s an agency that can be weaponized. And I think those kinds of agencies should just go away,” he added.
