Jeff Miller: “I support this bill, I have concern that the bill does little to mitigate the impact of the bureaucratic unions on the…”

“I support this bill, I have concern that the bill does little to mitigate the impact of the bureaucratic unions on the restructuring efforts. In 1996, Congress made serious attempts to downsize and reform the IRS. These efforts, however, were hampered by the union that represents the IRS employees. As pointed out in a Washington Post article, the union was more concerned with keeping their dues than helping Congress and their union Members make the IRS operate better. I am also disturbed about the abuse of official time that has taken place at the IRS. Official time is, 'authorized paid time off for Federal employees to engage in union activities.' In layman's terms, that is union work at taxpayers' expense. Although there may be some legitimate functions for using official time, the amount is skyrocketing at the IRS. Last year alone, the employees logged in over 718,000 hours; 718,000 hours paid by the taxpayers for official time to do union work. This is a 55-percent increase since 1993.”