As Scandal & Sequester looms… IRS Set to Pay $70 Million in Bonuses

IRS Building on Constitution Avenue (courtesy Magnus Manske)

Whether it’s spending millions of taxpayer dollars on needless conferences (with silly videos) or using their power to target individuals simply on the basis of ideology, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance has written about the IRS and the subsequent developments that have put a spotlight on an agency out of control. The latest out of the beleaguered agency is news late last week that the IRS is set to pay employee bonuses totaling a staggering amount of $70 million dollars. What is even more outlandish is that this directly defies an order from the Obama Administration to halt the bonuses due to Sequestration.

When Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) exposed this bonus deal with the National Treasury Employees Union last Wednesday, Michelle Eldridge, spokeswoman for the IRS, said that the “IRS is under a legal obligation to comply with its collective bargaining agreement, which specifies the terms by which awards are paid to bargaining-unit employees… In accordance with OMB guidance, the IRS is actively engaged with NTEU on these matters in recognition of our current budgetary constraints.” The agency would not comment on who exactly would get bonuses, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, who held top positions in the agency’s tax exempt division during the time the targeting occurred. Senator Grassley disagreed and Grassley noted in a letter that “While the IRS may claim that these bonuses are legally required under the original bargaining unit agreement, that claim would allegedly be inaccurate.”

In an amazing instance of irony, it was ousted IRS Chief Douglas Schulman and former acting IRS Chief Steven Miller who argued, under oath, increasing the budget could solve the cure to the problems facing the agency. In the confounded world of Mr. Miller, the way you solve wrongdoing at a federal agency is to give them more taxpayer dollars. Now we learn that an agency supposedly in need of more federal funding is spending $70 million dollars rewarding employees instead of fixing many of causes at the root of the agency’s problems.

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance is calling on the IRS to halt these excessive employee bonuses, comply with the White House directive, and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used responsibly in a time when so many are struggling and making cuts to their own household budgets in a reasonable manner. The same standard should not only be expected from the federal government, it should be welcomed by it.