Armed and Beltway-ish: More Federal Bureaucrats Than US Marines Authorized to Pack Heat

Armed and Beltway-ish: More Federal Bureaucrats Than US Marines Authorized to Pack Heat
Multiple bullets, including .45acp and 9mm, on Aug. 31, 2015. StockyPics/Flickr, Public Domain
Mark Hemingway
RealClearInvestigations
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When Congress authorized $80 billion this year to beef up Internal Revenue Service enforcement and staffing, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy invoked the language of war to warn that “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.”

A video quickly went viral racking up millions of views, purporting to show a bunch of clumsy bureaucrats receiving firearms training, prompting alarm that the IRS would be engaged in military-style raids of ordinary taxpayers. The GOP claims were widely attacked as exaggerations—since the video, though from the IRS, didn’t show official agent training—but the criticism has shed light on a growing trend: the rapid arming of the federal government.
Mark Hemingway reports on the key institutions shaping public life, from lobbying groups to federal agencies to elections, for RealClearInvestigations. His writing has appeared in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, MTV.com, and The Weekly Standard.
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