Politico - Why are IRS Employees Getting Big Bonuses

Op-Ed

By Representative Mark Meadows

As the list of abuses by federal agencies grows, Americans are rapidly losing trust in government. At the same time, bureaucrats are collecting large bonuses, often without merit, at the expense of hardworking taxpayers. Why do we allow these payouts to continue?
The IRS, now known for abusing its power by targeting groups for their political beliefs, is a prime example of an overgrown federal agency that doles out enormous bonuses to senior employees. Here are just a few examples.

While serving as commissioner of the IRS office responsible for tax-exempt organizations, Sarah Hall Ingram was paid bonuses of $26,550 to $35,400 in fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012. Each of these bonuses equals 15 to 20 percent of her annual salary, according to the IRS.

The IRS's director of exempt organizations, Lois Lerner, recently made headlines for invoking the Fifth Amendment when asked to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. From 2006 to 2012, Lerner was paid a combined total of $110,035 in bonuses. Senior technical adviser Nancy Marks received $121,027 in bonuses during those same years.

Faris Fink, the senior IRS official best known for his starring role as Mr. Spock in a "Star Trek" parody at an IRS conference, received $149,506 in bonuses between 2007 and 2012. By Fink's own admission, the lavish 2010 conference, originally reported as costing $4.1 million, could have actually cost $5 to $6 million. That same year, Fink was awarded a $30,975 bonus.

The IRS isn't the only agency using taxpayer dollars for big bonuses. In the weeks leading up to sequestration, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) threatened 90-minute waits for airline passengers. The agency led the public to believe flight delays were the inevitable consequence of dire budget cuts under sequestration. However, the FAA handed out more than $12 million in bonuses during fiscal year 2012 despite already knowing sequestration was likely to occur.

Altogether, in fiscal year 2011, 75 percent of Senior Executive Service (SES) employees, or those serving in high-level positions across the federal government, received bonuses at an average of $10,889 per person. The total bill for these awards came to more than $55 million.

These bonuses exemplify Washington's spending problem. A national debt of $17 trillion and an unemployment rate of 7.5 percent should not add up to millions in bonus payouts.

Earlier this year, as the automated budget cuts known as sequestration approached, federal official after federal official warned of massive furloughs for government workers. Yet the bonuses kept rolling in.

It's outrageous -- and I'm hardly the only one who thinks so. One of my constituents contacted me recently about this very issue. A long-serving federal employee whose pay is now frozen, she cannot understand why she is forced to make sacrifices back home in western North Carolina while senior employees in Washington rake in thousands of dollars in bonuses.

Many of my colleagues in the House stand with me in opposing government waste and overreach. We are considering numerous pieces of legislation this week, designated as "Stop Government Abuse Week," that restrain runaway government and re-empower citizens. One of the bills on the floor is the Common Sense in Compensation Act, which I introduced earlier this year to place limits on the size of federal employee bonuses as well as the number of SES employees who may receive performance bonuses in any given year.

Specifically, the bill holds federal employee discretionary bonuses to no more than 5 percent of base salary in any calendar year in which sequestration is in effect. It also limits the total amount of SES performance awards to 33 percent of all SES employees in a given agency. This rule would cut the number of SES employees receiving such bonuses nearly in half.

The bill also puts essential oversight measures in place. If an agency wants to award bonuses to more than 33 percent of its SES employees, it must petition the Office of Personnel Management and notify Congress.

It is time for the government to stop furloughing workers who depend on a paycheck from week to week while awarding outrageous bonuses to senior employees who plead the Fifth. The Common Sense in Compensation Act is sound legislation designed to stop these abuses and prevent the government from handing out millions in taxpayer dollars to federal employees under the guise of bonus pay.

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