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t’s not just the VA where we’re having trouble cutting out the deadwood, however. This report from the Washington Post has at least one real eye opener in it. The head of the Treasury has been made aware of problems at the Patent and Trademark Office. Over there, a number of workers were found to be falsifying their time reporting, billing the government for hundreds of thousands of dollars for time not worked. In some of the most severe cases, workers put in two hours of time, then had the audacity to charge the government for a full day plus...

Full title: Report: ‘Within IRS, Union Exerts Extreme Influence on Employees;’ ‘Makes It Difficult for Agency to Remain Apolitical’ (CNSNews.com) - When the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday released a bipartisan report on its investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s treatment of Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status, Sen. Orrin Hatch, the committee’s chairman, released a companion report prepared by the committee's majority staff that presented Hatch's additional views on the investigation. In these additional views, Hatch was highly critical of the influence that the National Treasury Employees Union has on the IRS and the ability of...

The National Treasury Employees Union has a PDF document on its website which shows why any attempt to shrink the government is foredoomed. ”The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is an independent labor union representing approximately 150,000 employees of 30 agencies of the United States government. The union specializes in representation of non-supervisory federal employees in every classification and pay level in civilian agencies.” The document urges NTEU members to oppose a list of “bad bills” now before congress. Here is the list of “bad bills” verbatim. LEGISLATION PROPOSING REDUCTIONS IN PAY, BENEFITS AND THE SIZE OF THE WORKFORCE H.R....

The Treasury Department has revealed to the House Ways and Means Committee that Internal Revenue Service employees spent over 500,000 hours on union activities last year. They estimated the cost to taxpayers at $23.5 million in salary and benefits. “Many Americans would be shocked to learn that IRS employees are unionized,” House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany, R-La., told Secrets. “The IRS has wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and over a half a million employee hours for union activities. It is absurd the IRS has the audacity to habitually come to this committee asking for...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) released the twenty-fifth in a series of facts about Obamacare: The union representing IRS workers — tasked with enforcing Obamacare — vocally opposes participation in the law’s exchanges. IRS union leaders provided their members with a form letter expressing concern with legislation to “push federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and into the insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.”

FEC Commissioner Don McGahn has released a slew of documents that reveal that left-wing partisan rot has set in at the FEC, as well as at the IRS. Among the staff abuses enumerated are: "[U]nauthorized investigations, unsanctioned work with law enforcement, and cases when documents were kept from commissioners. These abuses were largely aimed at investigating conservative political groups." As Townhall readers know, it now appears that IRS staff (Lois Lerner) colluded with FEC staff to harass the American Issues Project, a sworn enemy of the Obama campaign. So what do the IRS and the FEC staffs have in common?...

IRS chief Daniel Werfel says he wants to keep his health care plan, not switch to Obamacare: "Mr. Werfel, last week your employees who are a member of the National Treasury Employee's Union sent a form letter for union members to send in to ask they be exempt from the exchanges," a congressman asked. "Why are your employees trying to exempt themselves from the very law that you're tasked to enforce?" "I don't want to speak for the NTEU, but I'll offer a perspective as a federal employee myself and a federal employee at the IRS," said the IRS chief....

There are lots of despicable people in Washington engaged in a lot of unsavory behavior, so it would be very difficult to get agreement if you asked regular people to select the most odious feature of the political class. Many people would probably choose corruption as the defining characteristic of Washington, and it would be hard to argue with that choice, but I think hypocrisy is an even better choice. There's something fundamentally wrong when people push for policies while making sure they don't have to abide by the results. Yet it happens all the time in government. 1. It...

The National Treasury Employees Union is urging its members to oppose legislation that would force federal employees off their government healthcare plans and onto the state and national healthcare exchanges established under Obamacare. Members of Congress and their staffers are already required to participate in the exchanges, which will go into effect next October 1st under the Affordable Care Act. However, a bill (HR 1780) introduced in April by Rep. David Camp (R–Mich.) would extend that requirement to all federal employees, an idea that does not sit well with the union. So NTEU is strongly urging its members—including the Internal...

Full title: IRS Employees Union Is 'Very Concerned' About Being Required To Enroll In Obamacare's Health Insurance Exchanges In the private sector, many workers are concerned about losing their employer-sponsored health insurance coverage, and being dumped into Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges. Two weeks ago, representatives of three large labor unions fired off a harsh letter to Democratic leaders in Congress, complaining that Obamacare would “shatter…our hard-earned health benefits” and create “nightmare scenarios” for their members. Today, we learn that the National Treasury Employees Union—the union that includes employees of the Internal Revenue Service—is asking its members to write letters to...

Every other story about Obama’s union pals and government employees demanding waivers from the health-care disaster they supported pale in comparison to this one. ObamaCare is all about expanding the power of the Internal Revenue Service – that’s the only promise it has actually kept, the only part of the 11,000-page program that’s actually working the way it was supposed to. The IRS became as important to health care as any doctor or hospital when ObamaCare was passed, because they are its enforcement arm, and like all central planning schemes, there’s a huge amount of enforcing to be done. And...

IRS employees have a prominent role in Obamacare, but their union wants no part of the law. National Treasury Employees Union officials are urging members to write their congressional representatives in opposition to receiving coverage through President Obama’s health care law. The union leaders are providing members with a form letter to send to the congressmen that says “I am very concerned about legislation that has been introduced by Congressman Dave Camp to push federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and into the insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.”

Nine senators, congressman follow pattern of S&L scandal: contributions and intervention. So here’s the formula. An independent agency of the U.S. government. United States Senators. A powerful campaign contributor to said United States Senators. A powerful campaign contributor who wants something from said independent agency. Add it all together and what you get is — The Keating Five. And the IRS Ten. Let’s start, by way of illustrating how the game worked, with The Keating Five.

RBPundit pointed out this press release earlier today on Twitter. It’s a March 2011 missive from the president of the National Treasury Employees’ Union, which represents, among others, IRS employees:

There was a news report that the President of the Treasury Union met with Obama at the White House on a May 31 and then next day met with IRS officials. I also remember reading that months before this, the union had won the right to inject themselves in office practices. I suppose there could be a link there to show how Obama got the word out to target the Tea Party, but I would take it further: were the five agents involved in this mess members of that union? I know not all employees belong, but were only union...

The IRS has admitted to harassing conservative groups seeking tax exempt status, singling out for extra special scrutiny organizations which featured “patriot” or “tea party” designations in their name. We now know that a number of these groups were forced to withdraw their applications, being unable or unwilling to continue what in some cases had become a 3 year battle with the corrupt federal agency. But few in the media have bothered to ask who directed the IRS to engage in this criminal behavior. It has been reported that Senators Chuck Schumer and Al Franken addressed a letter to IRS...

Yesterday I asked in this space, among other questions about the IRS scandal, this: What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010 meeting? I received the following response to my question from the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) — the union for IRS employees headed by ex-14 year agent Colleen Kelley. The response came from union spokesperson Dina Long. It reads, in its entirety, this: Statement of NTEU On March 31, 2010, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley attended the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility at the Old Executive Office Building. The forum was attended by approximately 200...

Nearly two-thirds of campaign contributions from IRS employees go to Democrats.NTEU president Colleen Kelley The IRS may be “an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees,” in the words of White House press secretary Jay Carney, but its employees are represented by a powerful, deeply partisan union whose boss has publicly disparaged the Tea Party and criticized the Republican party for having ties to it. The White House continues to insist that profound incompetence, not partisan malice, led the IRS to single out conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. If the testimony of acting commissioner Steven Miller is true,...

The IRS scandal is becoming more insane by the minute.  After the testimony on Friday from the Inspector General and the now “retiring” acting IRS Commissioner, Steven Miller, things couldn’t be more convoluted.  First of all, Obama came out and said that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had “demanded the resignation” of Miller, when in fact, Miller was due to leave his post by June of this year.  So there was no “resigning” going on, and he will leave with all of his benefits intact.  Wow!  No accountability, no answers, no penalties. Next we find out that during the four year...

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley (in tan jacket) leads a protest earlier this month. About 250 Federal workers massed in Federal Plaza in Manhattan May 7 to protest the sequester cuts. (The Chief) This explains things… President Obama met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief Colleen Kelly in the White House the day before the agency targeted Tea Party. The Spectator reported: “For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?...