The public image of the IRS has already been tarnished by the targeting scandal of recent years. Now they’re making things worse by re-hiring hundreds of employees who were let go for outrageous reasons.
The Daily Signal reports:
The IRS Has Rehired Hundreds of Fired Employees. Congress Should Step In.
For one of the most punitive agencies in the federal government, the IRS sure is forgiving with its own employees.
Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., has proposed a bill that would prevent the IRS from rehiring employees fired for misconduct or poor performance.
The bill, titled the Ensuring Integrity in the IRS Workforce Act, follows a recent Treasury inspector general report that shows the IRS rehired more than 200 fired workers in a little over a year. A previous inspector general report proves this problem dates back to at least 2009.
According to the Treasury Department’s inspector general, the IRS did not provide officials responsible for hiring decisions with information about employment history, though that information is readily available. As a result, the IRS—an agency with nearly unrivaled access to citizens’ personal information and capacity to harass individual taxpayers—rehired:
- A fired worker with several misdemeanor theft convictions and one count of felony possession of a forgery device.
- 11 employees previously disciplined for unauthorized access to taxpayer accounts.
- An employee who was absent without leave for 270 hours—the equivalent of 33 work days.
- An employee fired for physically threatening co-workers.
- An employee fired for lying about previous criminal convictions on employment forms.
- 17 employees previously caught falsifying official documents.
Something like this would not happen in the private sector. Only big government makes decisions as terrible as these.
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