Representative Rodney Davis is a Republican from Illinois’ 13th Congressional district, which includes all or part of 14 counties across central and southwestern Illinois, including Champaign, Bloomington, and Springfield. We spoke to him from NPR headquarters in Washington D.C.
The average tax refund is down 8.4 percent among early filers according to the IRS. That’s partly a result of some popular deductions being eliminated, like the moving expenses deduction and unreimbursed employee expenses.
But Republican Congressman Rodney Davis, from Illinois’ 13th congressional district, said the reason for the smaller refunds is that people should have gotten less taxes taken out of their paychecks.
“We expect people to get less refunds, because the way we changed the withholding tables, people got more money in their paychecks, they were able to not give the IRS a loan.”
Davis says he hasn’t heard from constituents in Illinois that their refunds have decreased. The New York Times reports that most people will pay less overall in taxes, but the Government Accountability Office expects about four million people to pay more. We spoke with Rep. Davis from NPR headquarters in Washington D.C.
During the interview, Davis was also asked about a bill House Democrats introduced last month that would require background checks on almost all firearms, including those sold at gun shows or over the Internet. Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. When asked whether or not he would vote for a bill that would require background checks, Rep. Davis has this to say:
"In the end, the question I always ask myself is, would this piece of legislation have stopped crazed gunman from going into a school like Parkland and shooting innocent children? And the answer in this case I don't believe is yes. We've got to take that into consideration. How do we make sure that we in Washington don't impact lawful American citizens because local officials, especially in Parkland's case, did not do what they needed to do to take somebody who they knew was dangerous, who gave every warning sign... how in the world did that not get recognized before that person got to the crisis stage and we saw the tragedy?"