On the recordJuly 31, 2012
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, almost every Federal employee that I have run into, they're good, hardworking, patriotic people trying to do the right thing; but unfortunately we have a few that really aren't doing the right thing. I want to highlight a problem that we see out there. There are those Federal employees that are delinquent on their Federal taxes. Now, this becomes egregious, I think, because of the nature of their employment-- they're working for the Federal Government, they're being paid by the Federal taxpayers, and yet they're not paying their own Federal taxes. Unfortunately, over the course of time this situation has not gotten better. People are dealing with very difficult situations, they have adopted something or somehow in their life they've gotten upside down. The nature and the spirit of this bill, the bill that I am the chief sponsor on, is to find those people who are trying to do the right thing--they're trying to rectify it, they're trying to come up with a plan--we're not going after those people. But for the other group of people who are just totally ignoring the law and they're not living up to their obligation, they're not paying their Federal taxes, there ought to be more of a consequence. The number of delinquent employees has remained fairly consistent since the year 2004. Remarkably, there were 102,794 employees who were delinquent with their Federal taxes back in 2004.…
