An alleged source of Republican opposition to cracking down on tax cheats

Tax cheats underpay taxes by an estimated $1 to $1.4 trillion/year. Years ago, conservative anti-Obama and anti-government propaganda argued that Obama weaponized the IRS when Obamacare imposed a tax penalty for not signing up. That appears to be a major part of fascist Republican Party opposition to giving the IRS the budget it needs to collect taxes. So, us honest taxpayers are just suckers because we don't cheat and the fascist GOP (FGOP) has no problem with it, at least not enough to do anything fix the annual festival of tax cheating. The New York Times writes:

A plan by Democrats to pay for infrastructure investments by beefing up the Internal Revenue Service to catch tax evaders has resurfaced old resentments for Republicans, whose distrust of the agency has simmered for years, erasing hopes of a bipartisan legislative accord built on narrowing the so-called tax gap.

Republican senators backed away this week from a provision to toughen tax enforcement at the I.R.S., gutting a crucial source of financing for an infrastructure package that would devote about $600 billion to roads, bridges, broadband and other public goods. That has left lawmakers scrambling to figure out how to pay for the legislation and has again put the I.R.S., whose funding and ability to conduct audits has diminished over the past decade, in limbo.

For conservative activists, who have harbored enmity toward the I.R.S. for more than a decade, the agency is considered a threat that is beyond reclamation.

“As we learned in 2013, Democrats have weaponized the I.R.S. as a political tool, and now they want an even more powerful I.R.S. to target their political enemies just as they did under Obama,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, a free-enterprise advocacy group. “Their proposal is not cost effective even by optimistic estimates and it’s just another example of the vicious tactics of the radical socialist left.”  

The tax collection agency was never particularly popular with Republicans, who tend to embrace small government and low taxes. But their animus toward the I.R.S. became more impassioned in 2010, after Democrats and the Obama administration used it as a tool for enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that everyone buy health insurance.

Also note that the FGOP has got its messaging about Democrats in place and down pat. Almost always these days, Democrats and the Democratic Party are slandered as the radical left, socialist left, radical socialist left or something like that. 

Nothing the Democrats propose to pay for federal spending by collecting taxes owed is socialist. Paying for spending on infrastructure isn't socialist either. The FGOP argument is a red herring used to distract people from inconvenient truths such as (i) the FGOP condones massive tax cheating and has for years, and (ii) the FGOP hates government and (a) wants to starve it to death by cutting off federal revenues as much as possible, and (b) wants to privatize as much government activity as possible in its ongoing push to capture much more power and wealth for powerful and wealthy people, groups and special interests. 

Questions: Is it radical to try to pay for federal spending on infrastructure or to try to reduce tax evasion? Is domestic spending for, e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, social security and infrastructure, all of which the FGOP hates and wants to get rid of, socialist and doomed to fail as inherently flawed central planning? Should the the free market be free to deal with these matters because all socialism always fails and free markets always succeed?

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