WASHINGTON — Last week, a House committee released testimony from an IRS whistleblower accusing the Justice Department of interfering in the federal tax collection unit’s investigation of the president’s son. Joe Biden, Hunter, who Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said received a “darling affair.”
Yet this week, DeSantis said he would abolish the agency that undertook the investigation of Hunter Biden if he wins the presidency.
DeSantis, second in national polls for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, also said he would eliminate the departments of energy and education, which date from the Jimmy Carter administration, and the Department of trade, which dates from Teddy Roosevelt.
“We would do education, we would do commerce, we would do energy and we would do IRS,” DeSantis told Fox News host Martha McCallum. In the next breath, he recognized the most glaring obstacle to fulfilling those promises: He would need Congress to deliver on them.
DeSantis did not elaborate on his plans, and a spokesperson for his campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether, as president, DeSantis would try to move programs to other departments. or whether he would ax the agency at the center of investigating Hunter Biden’s finances could encourage the powerful to evade taxes.
“The timing is strange,” said a Republican strategist who isn’t aligned with any of the presidential campaigns, noting that IRS whistleblowers are going to be in the spotlight in the coming weeks.
“While House Republicans continue to work with whistleblowers, the IRS has already secured a plea deal from Hunter Biden, and the idea that we should leave the political elite immune to crime is not not something that will play well with the base Republican,” the strategist said.
DeSantis may have left himself open to criticism by not putting more flesh on the bone of his proposal at a time when he is just beginning to roll out his policies on the campaign trail.
“DeSantis actually doesn’t have any detailed plans,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for former President Donald Trump, who has a large lead in national polls for the GOP nomination.
“Everything that comes out of his mouth is just a salad of incomprehensible words with no real details,” Cheung said. “On the other hand, President Trump has released the boldest, most detailed and transparent political plan – Agenda47 – that outlines exactly what a second Trump term will look like.”
The battle highlights a point of tension as DeSantis tries to maneuver Trump’s policy right on a host of issues. What is popular with conservative primary voters is not always helpful to the party’s candidate in the general election.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who sought to eliminate the three departments in 1995, declined to comment on specifics of DeSantis’ proposal. But he called for a “debureaucratization” of the federal government.
“I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to have a very profound and dramatic overhaul of the system,” Gingrich said in a brief phone interview with NBC News. He cited the example of Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa, who signed legislation reducing the number of state agencies at the Cabinet level from 37 to 16, as a model to follow at the federal level.
“She can be the case study,” Gingrich said.
But massive government reorganization proved much easier at the state level than at the federal level. There are advocates for the work of entire departments – from legislators to agency heads, and from interest groups to individual citizens.
“How realistic is it for a presidential candidate to say he is going to abolish an agency? It’s realistic to say, but not to do,” said Brian W. Smith, professor of political science at St. Edwards University in Texas. “Talking is cheap, but killing an agency is not.”
Smith said it wasn’t just about the agency’s presence in Washington — which is typically at the center of much of the political rhetoric focused on abolishing departments — but the impact that the abolition of any agency may have across the country.
“Abolition of agencies is a dirty, nasty process with clear losers – people and communities depend on these agencies for their livelihoods,” he said. “Right across from my college is an IRS facility. What happens to the people who work there?”
Raymond Orbach, who was sworn in as the Department of Energy’s first undersecretary for science in June 2006, said the agency’s functions are vital to national security and scientific progress.
“What people don’t understand is that this is not just a federal agency, but a federal agency that runs 17 national labs. It’s the biggest proponent of medical science , bigger,” he said, than the National Science Foundation, “and it just has an extraordinary, significant reach across the country.”
Additionally, it is the headquarters of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons and works on global security and nonproliferation efforts.
“The relationship between NNSA and the rest of the department and basic science is crucial,” Orbach said. “It’s a complex relationship that has been built over time.”
Yet DeSantis is the latest in a long line of Republicans to propose cutting energy and other departments.
Ronald Reagan spoke out against the creation of the Department of Education when he ran against Carter in 1980, but he remained untouched through his two terms. Fifteen years later, Gingrich finally compromised with the GOP-controlled Senate to preserve the energy, education, and commerce departments in the Congressional budget that year.
In 2012, then-Texas Governor Rick Perry memorably forgot the name of the Department of Energy, which he would later lead for Trump, during a televised primary debate.
Rep. Darren Soto, a Florida Democrat who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said DeSantis’ proposal “would threaten national security and public safety, drive us into a recession, and leave discrimination crack down” if adopted.
“Trade is our main employment agency, fueling our current manufacturing boom and overseeing parts of our ambitious infrastructure plan,” Soto said. “Education protects students with disabilities and English language learners. And the IRS raises the funds needed to operate our U.S. military and other key federal programs.”
Abolition of the IRS has become a popular call to action among conservatives in recent years. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, campaigned on the idea when he ran for president in 2016, and some of his aides from that bid are now working to elect DeSantis.
Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., introduced legislation this year that would end the IRS as part of a broader plan to replace income, gift, payroll and estate taxes. by a fixed national sales tax that would start at 23% in 2025.
Democrats believe the lump-sum tax plan, which Speaker Kevin McCarthy has agreed to introduce to the House as part of a deal to secure votes for his job as president, will backfire politically on Republicans.
“They want to raise taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items like groceries, gas, clothes and cutting taxes for the wealthy,” Biden said in January. “They want working-class people to still pay 10, 20 percent of their taxes, depending on where they live and how they spend the money. And they’re going to cut taxes on the super rich.”
Trump has proposed sweeping cuts to Education and Commerce Department programs during his tenure. But he did not seek to eliminate a Cabinet department or the IRS.
One measure of the potential political backlash from the idea of the flat tax — which Republicans call the “fair tax” — is how allies of the top GOP nomination contenders have torn each candidate over it.
Trump’s super PAC MAGA Inc. ran an ad in May accusing DeSantis of wanting to raise taxes because of his co-sponsorship of an earlier version of Carter’s bill when he was a member of the House. Never Back Down, the DeSantis-supporting superPAC, responded by rounding up past clips of Trump mentioning “flat” and “fair” taxes while advocating for the United States to simplify its tax system.
The general concept of getting rid of the IRS is popular with GOP primary voters, according to strategists and polls.
“As a Republican, anytime you talk about eliminating the IRS, you get applause,” said David Urban, a former Trump campaign adviser who is neutral in the race. He noted that Biden’s efforts to bolster IRS enforcement have made the issue an especially hot topic for Republicans.
It may overshadow the timing of DeSantis’ pledge, made as House Republicans demand testimony from senior Justice Department and IRS officials following allegations by whistleblowers that considerations policies impeded the agency’s investigation.
What remains unclear is how DeSantis plans to collect revenue if he abolishes the IRS but does not move to a national sales tax.
Cheung said Trump’s specificity when it comes to politics is a key contrast to DeSantis.
“That’s why he’s dominating poll after poll — both nationally and statewide — and is the only candidate capable of beating Joe Biden,” Cheung said of Trump.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com