Chaffetz's Bill To Fire Federal Workers With Large Tax Debts Fails in HoR

[AuH20]

Normally, I'm opposed to tax paying but in this case I depart from conventional wisdom. Rules for thee and not for me? Federal workers are allowed to terrorize us with impunity, while we must ALWAYS adhere to their rules when it suits them?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/15/chaffetz-plan-to-fire-federal-workers-with-big-tax-debts-fails-in-the-house/


Republicans called up the legislation just weeks after the IRS reported that more than 100,000 federal workers owed about $1.1 billion in unpaid taxes as of last year. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), said Congress needs to send the message that it’s a privilege to be a federal worker, and that all of them must pay their taxes.

House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was one of several Democrats who opposed legislation on Wednesday to fire federal workers with large outstanding tax debts.

“If you’re a federal worker thumbing your nose at the federal government, not paying your taxes, then you should be eligible to be fired by the supervisor,” he said.

But Democrats opposed the bill, and said that despite the IRS’s own report, there is no problem at all with delinquent tax debts.

[thoughtomator]

In principle, sounds good. In practice, it would get a lot of work expensively offloaded to contractors who then would not be covered by the regulation, as happened with whistleblower laws.

These kind of ideas need to be gamed out to see how they can be undermined, and this one - like the whistleblower laws - or , say, a prohibition on foreigners in sensitive FedGov IT operations - is undermined easily.