Don't do stupid stuff, Uncle Sam -- Aug. 14, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Maybe, as Hillary Clinton said, “Don’t do stupid stuff” isn’t a proper organizing principle for U.S. foreign policy. But it surely would be a welcome change here at home.

If only President Obama could order the federal government to stop doing stupid stuff on the home front, he might begin to rebuild people’s rock-bottom trust in government. Here’s a modest start: make sure federal workers pay their taxes.

It seems obvious to the point of absurdity that federal employees should pay what they owe or have their wages garnished, but it doesn’t always work that way.

For example, about 83,000 Pentagon employees and contractors who held or were eligible for security clearances owed $730 million in taxes in 2012, the Government Accountability Office reported last month. The median amount owed was $2,700, but people owed from $100 to millions of dollars. Most of the tax delinquents had no plan to repay their tax debt.

The report found that about 26,000 employees and contractors had access to classified information at the same time they owed federal taxes totaling $229 million, and about 6,200 of those had top-secret clearance. 

In other words, we are risking sensitive secrets to people who are vulnerable to financial pressure. As the report said, someone who is “financially overextended is at risk of having to engage in illegal acts to generate funds.”

The personal finances and tax situations of applicants for security clearances are supposedly considered, but federal law does not expressly prohibit someone with unpaid tax debt from receiving clearance. Records don’t indicate how often clearance is denied because of unpaid taxes.

Naturally, the GAO’s report prompted outrage on Capitol Hill.

“Federal tax cheats with security clearances jeopardize both our national and economic security, and could unnecessarily put our nation’s classified information at risk,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in a statement. Coburn has been talking about cracking down on federal workers who don’t pay their taxes for years.  In the House, a bill to fire federal workers with unpaid tax bills failed last year.

   

But the problem doesn’t exist just at the Pentagon.

Congress could start by cleaning up Capitol Hill. About 3.24 percent of Senate workers and 4.87 percent of House workers owed $8.6 million in taxes as of last Sept. 30, according to IRS data released in May under a Freedom of Information Act request by USA Today. That’s 714 tax delinquents on Capitol Hill. The IRS didn’t say whether any members of Congress were delinquent.

  

At the White House, 36 of nearly 1,800 workers owe on their taxes for a tax delinquency rate of 2 percent. 

In all, more than 318,000 federal workers and retirees owed $3.3 billion in back taxes, USA Today reported. That’s slightly more than 3 percent.

To be fair, the proportion of tax delinquents is far higher among people not working in government than among those who do. The IRS estimates that 8.7 percent of taxpayers overall owe tax bills.

Still, it’s maddening that federal workers are skipping out on their taxes.  Not even all IRS workers pay their fair share. About 1.2 percent of IRS employees are tax scofflaws.

Even worse, some of the tax delinquents at IRS got bonuses. IRS awarded more than 1,100 employees more than $1 million in cash, 10,000 hours off and 69 step increases or promotions within a year that their tax compliance problems were substantiated, according to a report last March by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

For its part, IRS responded that it had examined the policies of 15 federal agencies and 13 states and found that only one agency had a rule against granting a bonus in cases of misconduct.  

It’s no wonder Americans’ trust in government has sunk to a record low. Only 13 percent of people say government in Washington can be trusted to do what’s right all or most of the time, a new CNN-IRC International Poll found. About three in four say they trust government only some of the time, and one in 10 say they never trust Washington.

  

Lack of trust maybe epidemic but it needn’t be inevitable. A first step to restoring people’s confidence is to ensuring that federal employees pay their taxes.  Government doesn’t have to do stupid stuff.

©2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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We're all one disaster away from Moore -- May 23, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

After the horrific tornado in Oklahoma and as another Atlantic hurricane season starts, it’s a good time to think about federal disaster aid. You may have heard politicians in Washington insist that there’s no debate about funding disaster relief. Don’t believe it.

Everyone wants to help the 12,000 families whose homes were destroyed in Moore and Oklahoma City, Okla. The path of devastation is as heartbreaking as the victims’ spirit is inspiring. Fortunately, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund can handle whatever part of the estimated $2 billion in damages is not covered by insurance.

That’s great, and it means nobody in Congress has to cast a difficult vote against aid to people who obviously need it. Now let’s think ahead. We still could have more tornadoes. The hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. Activity in the Atlantic is expected to be above normal.

The good news for Oklahomans is that FEMA’s disaster fund has $11.6 billion, more than enough to cover expected tornado losses. What happens if we have more tornadoes and a bad season of hurricanes? In the current austerity environment, no one should be surprised to see a repeat of previous squabbles on Capitol Hill about disaster aid.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., ran into a buzz saw of criticism this week when he said that he “absolutely” would require any disaster relief for his state to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. At least he seemed consistent.

Coburn and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., were among 36 Senate Republicans who voted no earlier this year on a $50.5 billion emergency funding bill for victims of Superstorm Sandy.  The lawmakers objected because the costs weren’t offset by spending cuts and because the bill included extraneous measures for other states.

When Coburn said he’d apply the same standard to his own state, he got creamed in the social media. He issued a rebuttal and went on the media circuit, claiming he has always supported disaster aid – as long as it goes to the victims of disasters and not to other projects.

“I supported a scaled-down $25 billion version of disaster aid for Sandy, but I strongly opposed a $50 billion package that was an all-you-can-eat buffet for politicians and politically connected contractors,” Coburn wrote in an op-ed on CNN.com.

Coburn also contended the news media had created an issue where none exists. Because the money is already in the FEMA fund, no funding bill exists and no vote is required, he said. You could get whiplash trying to follow such arguments.

For his part, Inhofe argued that relief for Oklahoma would be “totally different” from the Sandy relief Christmas tree bill. People in Oklahoma wouldn’t exploit the tragedy as people in other states had done, he explained.

Contrast Coburn and Inhofe with Rep. Tom Cole, the Republican who represents Moore in the U.S. House. Cole supported the relief bill for Hurricane Sandy victims. He said his hometown was only “one tornado away from being Joplin.” He was referring to the 2011 tornado that tore apart that Missouri city.

 

“I just didn’t know it’d be quite this quick,” Cole told NPR in an interview this week. His own home in Moore is only a minute’s walk from the path of destruction, he said, but it was spared this time, as it was in the equally horrific tornado of 1999.

If Moore was one tornado away from Joplin, and we know it was, we’re all one disaster – tornado, hurricane, earthquake, fire, flood -- away from Moore. We don’t know when the worst might come. We want to believe Congress will be there for us.  

And so we’re back where we were last October when Hurricane Sandy hit. Congress eventually approved emergency supplemental funding for Sandy victims, but only after adding some extraneous projects. The additional projects weren't directly related to the need, but they insured that the bill passed.

When the next need arises -- as it inevitably will -- cannot Congress do what is legitimately needed without the histrionics of insisting that it be paid for immediately?

Congressional Democrats and most Republicans like to say that disaster aid is in a category of its own, and victims need help when they need it. We may learn in the next six months whether the politicians mean it.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.