House Republicans continue their important work of chasing shiny objects.
House Republicans are pushing yet another attack on federal workers, this time the 3.6 percent of them who are delinquent on their taxes. A bill coming up for a vote this week would require the even smaller percentage—probably around 0.4 percent—of "seriously delinquent" federal workers to be fired.
While everyone should pay the taxes they owe, and you'd think federal workers would have an especially keen sense of that, there are some logical problems with the plan to fire them if they don't. Rep. Elijah Cummings pointed one out, noting that "the measure actually undermines the ability of the government to collect the unpaid taxes. It is much more difficult to recoup delinquent taxes from someone who is unemployed." Additionally,
In a statement on Friday, the [National Treasury Employees Union] said that the government already has adequate remedies in place to deal with federal workers who fall behind. The union said executive-branch agencies, for instance, can take disciplinary actions that range from counseling to removal.
So a fraction of the tax-delinquent 3.6 percent of federal workers—who are already subject to disciplinary action—would be subject to firing by this bill, making it harder for them to pay the taxes they owe. Makes sense to me! Really what we're looking at here is another effort by Republicans to connect federal workers with bad things in the public mind. It's not that tax-delinquent federal workers are really a burning national problem, it's that if you pass a bill targeting them, you make people assume that it's a problem and that these workers are deadbeat leeches. It's the same principle as making drug tests a requirement for receiving welfare or unemployment insurance—it doesn't actually save the government any money and may even cost money, but it implies that those people are bad and deserve whatever nastiness Republicans throw at them.
Another bill, this one drawing bipartisan support, would prevent tax-delinquent contractors from getting large federal contracts or grants.