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Today, U.S. Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) released the following statement after successfully passing an amendment on the House floor blocking bonuses for senior career appointees at the IRS and other federal agencies that receive funding through H.R. 5485, the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2017:
“It is unconscionable that Lois Lerner and other dishonest senior officials within the IRS have received more than $100,000 in bonuses in recent years. Committing perjury, purposely disposing of hard drives and more than 24,000 emails in order to stymie an investigation, while providing an extremely poor level of service to taxpayers doesn’t warrant a single penny in bonus compensation.
“Giving out bonuses to senior management in the middle of one of the largest and most significant scandals in modern American history is a slap in the face to the American public. Once the IRS can prove that it will hold rogue employees accountable for their ineptitude, I will cease my efforts to prohibit these awards.”
Background:
The full text of the Gosar amendment blocking bonuses for senior staff at the IRS and other federal agencies that receive funding through H.R. 5485 can be found HERE.
Under the direction of Commissioner John Koskinen, IRS officials have led a coordinated effort to hide the truth about this IRS’s targeting of innocent Americans based on their political beliefs. On Koskinen’s watch, the IRS intentionally destroyed nearly 24,000 emails from Lois Lerner and failed to comply with a Congressional subpoena. To make matters worse, Commissioner Koskinen said in March 2014 that the IRS had turned over all Lerner’s emails and all requested information, yet, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration uncovered more than 1,000 emails that the IRS tried to hide.
In April 2014, the Treasury Inspector General reported that more than 1,100 IRS employees with delinquent tax returns received bonuses of more than a million dollars. That same investigation found 2,800 IRS employees facing disciplinary actions received more than $2.8 million in monetary bonuses.
The Office of Personnel Management reported that in fiscal year 2014 alone, 61.5% of all Senior Executives within the Treasury Department received performance awards.
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste supported this amendment and FreedomWorks key voted in favor of the amendment.
The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the Federal Communications Commission and several other federal agencies were also blocked from handing out lavish bonuses as a result of the Gosar amendment.
Based on the most recent report from the Office of Personnel Management, the Gosar amendment will save at least $4,008,490.66 this fiscal year.
In fiscal year 2014, senior bureaucrats within the Treasury received bonuses of $2,978,814,00, senior bureaucrats within GSA received bonuses of $379,841.76, senior bureaucrats within OPM received bonuses of $357,935.85 and senior bureaucrats with the SBA received bonuses of $291,899.046. As a result of the Gosar amendment, all four of these federal agencies are blocked from issuing bonuses to senior career appointees and so are several other federal agencies that receive funding from this bill.
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