Reining in big government

"The least government is the best government. We should have just as little as we can get along with." Those are the wise words of Harry S Truman, a proud Missouri native and America's 33rd president. It's been several decades since he spoke those words, yet they still ring true today. That's because the federal government has become significantly more powerful after two years of one-party Democrat rule in Washington. But what's even more concerning is how the Left is using big government to force their views and beliefs across all of society. They've given Americans an ultimatum: either adopt their radical values or get left behind -- or in some cases, thrown into jail.

The Biden administration has weaponized the federal government to target and harass Americans who hold different beliefs. We saw the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) go after parents who simply disagree with what their children are learning in school. And more recently, the Left has called on the FBI to go after a new target: the pro-life movement. In September, a father from Pennsylvania was arrested by the FBI at his home and charged with breaking federal law for allegedly pushing an out-of-control abortion clinic volunteer who verbally abused his young son at a peaceful protest outside an abortion provider back in 2021. It's important to point out that the FBI stepped in despite the fact that local authorities had already dropped the charges. The Biden administration is seemingly more concerned with going after pro-life Americans than bringing to justice the violent, radical Leftists who have attacked over 72 pregnancy resource centers and 80 churches since reports of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision first emerged. To date, there have been zero reports of FBI investigations or Justice Department prosecutions in relation to these heinous attacks.

The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer under one-party Democrat rule of Washington. That's because, over the last two years, the Left has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on massive spending bills to improve the lives of the wealthy and their liberal supporters at the expense of the working class.

The Biden administration's solution to skyrocketing gas prices was to tell Americans to purchase electric vehicles, which cost an average of $60,000 -- an amount that's far higher than the annual income for many workers in southern Missouri. And then there's Biden's student loan forgiveness debacle, where he's illegally circumventing Congress and spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to forgive student loan debt for doctors and lawyers. And as families struggle with unaffordable health care costs, Biden and Washington Democrats spent billions of dollars to extend Obamacare subsidies to wealthy Americans making up to $300,000. It's maddening that working-class Americans are footing the bill for Washington Democrats' spending spree -- the very same reckless spending that derailed the economy in the first place and has driven consumer prices to the highest they've been in 40 years.

To make sure working-class Americans pay up to cover the cost of all that welfare for the wealthy, Washington Democrats supercharged the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) -- a fearsome government agency with an awful track record of abuse. Washington Democrats' so-called Inflation Reduction Act included $80 billion for the IRS -- an amount that's more than six times the agency's annual budget. In fact, the IRS Commissioner under President Obama even questioned that massive funding amount, saying "I'm not sure you'd be able to efficiently use that much money." So what will this significantly more powerful government agency do with all that money? It's going to hire 87,000 new agents to target and harass middle- and low-income Americans. Projections based on historical IRS audit data show that under this expansion, the IRS will conduct an additional 700,000 audits on Americans making less than $75,000 a year. In Missouri alone, an additional 18,000 families making less than $200,000 will be victims of IRS audits. In other words, Washington Democrats are stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

As a farmer and the son of working-class parents, I take it personally when Washington Democrats attack the values of rural America. I know that the last thing Missouri families need is big government dictating every aspect of life. When the new Republican House majority starts Jan. 3, we will immediately get to work to restore individual freedom because, just as the great Harry Truman once said, "[t]he least government is the best government."

Jason Smith (R-MO) represents the eighth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.