Guess Who's Getting $70 Million in Bonuses?
Despite being under heavy scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill and all over the country for inappropriately targeting conservative groups, IRS employees are about to receive $70 million in bonuses.The Internal Revenue Service is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses despite an Obama administration directive to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts enacted this year, according to a GOP senator.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa says his office has learned that the IRS is executing an agreement with the employees' union on Wednesday to pay the bonuses. Grassley says the bonuses should be canceled under an April directive from the White House budget office.
The directive was written by Danny Werfel, a former budget official who has since been appointed acting IRS commissioner.
"The IRS always claims to be short on resources," Grassley said. "But it appears to have $70 million for union bonuses. And it appears to be making an extra effort to give the bonuses despite opportunities to renegotiate with the union and federal instruction to cease discretionary bonuses during sequestration."And how is this even possible? Through unions and government bureaucracy.
Office of Management and Budget "guidance directs that agencies should not pay discretionary monetary awards at this time, unless legally required," IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said in a statement. "IRS is under a legal obligation to comply with its collective bargaining agreement, which specifies the terms by which awards are paid to bargaining-unit employees."This news comes just as the quarterly taxes of Americans become due. As a reminder, Lois Lerner, the woman in charge of tax exempt groups during the time of the blatant Tea Party targeting, is still pulling a six figure paycheck while being put on "leave" just as summer begins. Must be nice! Not to mention during the time targeting occurred, Lerner received $42,000 in bonuses and raked in $740,000 in taxpayer funded salary between 2009 and 2012.
Eldridge, however, would not say whether the IRS believes it is contractually obligated to pay the bonuses.
"In accordance with OMB guidance, the IRS is actively engaged with NTEU on these matters in recognition of our current budgetary constraints," Eldridge said.
The National Treasury Employees Union did not respond to requests for comment.
Keep working America, the IRS is depending on you.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/06/19/guess-whos-getting-70-million-in-bonuses-n1622633
10 reasons the farm bill makes no sense
Congress is gearing up to pass a major farm bill for the first time since 2008, and this year’s bill threatens to be much larger than the last one.Farm subsidies make political sense for many members of Congress. But they make no practical sense because they damage the economy, hurt the environment
, and are grossly unfair.So in the hopes that the practical will prevail over the political, here are 10 reasons why both the House and Senate should go back to the drawing board with their legislation:
1.) The farm bill is far too costly. George W. Bush vetoed the 2008 farm bill because it “would needlessly expand the size and scope of government.” Unfortunately, Congress overrode his veto and enacted that bill, costing $640 billion over 10 years. Today, the House is considering a farm bill that would cost
taxpayers $940 billion over 10 years — 47 percent more than the one that even big-spending President Bush couldn’t stomach.2.) Food stamp costs have exploded. About four-fifths of the cost of the farm bill is for food stamps
.
The House bill would trim food stamps by about $2 billion a year — but
the costs of food stamps have quadrupled over the last decade from about
$20 billion to $80 billion a year. The cut in the House bill is far too
tiny after such a huge expansion.3.) Farm subsidies are reverse Robin Hood. Farm subsidies transfer the earnings of average taxpaying families to well-off farm businesses
.
In 2011, the average income of farm households was $87,289, or 25
percent more than the $69,677 average of all U.S. households. Farm
subsidies even go to millionaire farmland owners such as Mark
Rockefeller and Ted Turner.4.) Subsidies are very concentrated. Although politicians love to discuss the plight of small farmers, the vast majority of farm subsidies go to the largest farms. In recent years, the biggest 10 percent of farm businesses have received three-quarters of farm subsidies, according to the Environmental
Working Group.5.) Subsidies damage the economy. In most industries, market prices balance supply and demand
and encourage efficient production. By short-circuiting the market
mechanism in agriculture, subsidies cause overproduction, land price
inflation, and other distortions.6.) Subsidies harm the environment. Farm programs draw marginal farmland into production and encourage the overuse of fertilizers. Lands that might otherwise be used for forests or wetlands get drawn into farm use. Florida sugar cane cultivation, for example, causes substantial damage to the Everglades, yet it thrives because of import protections.
7.) Farm programs harm free trade. U.S. farm subsidies are a hurdle to promoting free markets around the world, and this year’s farm bill could increase international trade distortions. U.S. farm programs also hinder the ability of poor countries to achieve
stronger economic growth with farm exports.8.) Some farm programs harm consumers. Federal controls on the dairy and sugar industries raise prices and are costly to U.S. consumers.
9.) Farm subsidies are scandal-prone. As in all federal subsidy programs, a substantial share of farm subsidies are wasted on fraudulent and improper payments. Subsidies also go to farmers who haven’t suffered substantial losses.
10.) Farmers don’t need subsidies. If farm subsidies ended, U.S. agriculture would face some short-term adjustments, but it would thrive over the long term. Farmers would adjust their planting and land use, cut costs
,
and diversify their sources of income. A stronger and more innovative
agriculture industry would emerge, as occurred in New Zealand after that
nation repealed virtually all its farm subsidies in 1984.Farm bills usually benefit from substantial political momentum, but this year’s bill isn’t a done deal yet. In the House, there are many members who weren’t in office when the 2008 farm bill was enacted and who see themselves as fiscal conservatives. They know that the federal debt is far higher today than it was in 2008, and hopefully they understand that passing a farm bill that is 47 percent more expensive than the last one is the wrong way to go.
Niall Ferguson: The Regulated States of America
Tocqueville saw a nation of individuals who were defiant of authority. Today? Welcome to Planet Government.
In "Democracy in America," published in 1833, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the way Americans preferred voluntary association to government regulation. "The inhabitant of the United States," he wrote, "has only a defiant and restive regard for social authority and he appeals to it . . . only when he cannot do without it."Unlike Frenchmen, he continued, who instinctively looked to the state to provide economic and social order, Americans relied on their own efforts. "In the United States, they associate for the goals of public security, of commerce and industry, of morality and religion. There is nothing the human will despairs of attaining by the free action of the collective power of individuals."
What especially amazed Tocqueville was the sheer range of nongovernmental organizations Americans formed: "Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations . . . but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fetes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools."
Tocqueville would not recognize America today. Indeed, so completely has associational life collapsed, and so enormously has the state grown, that he would be forced to conclude that, at some point between 1833 and 2013, France must have conquered the United States.
The decline of American associational life was memorably documented in Robert Puttnam's seminal 1995 essay "Bowling Alone," which documented the exodus of Americans from bowling leagues, Rotary clubs and the like. Since then, the downward trend in "social capital" has only continued. According to the 2006 World Values Survey, active membership even of religious associations has declined from just over half the population to little more than a third (37%). The proportion of Americans who are active members of cultural associations is down to 14% from 24%; for professional associations the figure is now just 12%, compared with more than a fifth in 1995. And, no, Facebook FB +0.74% is not a substitute.
Instead of joining together to get things done, Americans have increasingly become dependent on Washington. On foreign policy, it may still be true that Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus. But when it comes to domestic policy, we all now come from the same place: Planet Government.
As the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Clyde Wayne Crews shows in his invaluable annual survey of the federal regulatory state, we have become the regulation nation almost imperceptibly. Excluding blank pages, the 2012 Federal Register—the official directory of regulation—today runs to 78,961 pages. Back in 1986 it was 44,812 pages. In 1936 it was just 2,620.
True, our economy today is much larger than it was in 1936—around 12 times larger, allowing for inflation. But the Federal Register has grown by a factor of 30 in the same period.
The last time regulation was cut was under Ronald Reagan, when the number of pages in the Federal Register fell by 31%. Surprise: Real GDP grew by 30% in that same period. But Leviathan's diet lasted just eight years. Since 1993, 81,883 new rules have been issued. In the past 10 years, the "final rules" issued by our 63 federal departments, agencies and commissions have outnumbered laws passed by Congress 223 to 1.
Right now there are 4,062 new regulations at various stages of implementation, of which 224 are deemed "economically significant," i.e., their economic impact will exceed $100 million.
The cost of all this, Mr. Crews estimates, is $1.8 trillion annually—that's on top of the federal government's $3.5 trillion in outlays, so it is equivalent to an invisible 65% surcharge on your federal taxes, or nearly 12% of GDP. Especially invidious is the fact that the costs of regulation for small businesses (those with fewer than 20 employees) are 36% higher per employee than they are for bigger firms.
Next year's big treat will be the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, something every small business in the country must be looking forward to with eager anticipation. Then, as Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) warned readers on this page 10 months ago, there's also the Labor Department's new fiduciary rule, which will increase the cost of retirement planning for middle-class workers; the EPA's new Ozone Rule, which will impose up to $90 billion in yearly costs on American manufacturers; and the Department of Transportation's Rear-View Camera Rule. That's so you never have to turn your head around when backing up.
President Obama occasionally pays lip service to the idea of tax reform. But nothing actually gets done and the Internal Revenue Service code (plus associated regulations) just keeps growing—it passed the nine-million-word mark back in 2005, according to the Tax Foundation, meaning nearly 19% more verbiage than 10 years before. While some taxes may have been cut in the intervening years, the tax code just kept growing.
I wonder if all this could have anything to do with the fact that we still have nearly 12 million people out of work, plus eight million working part-time jobs, five long years after the financial crisis began.
Genius that he was, Tocqueville saw this transformation of America coming. Toward the end of "Democracy in America" he warned against the government becoming "an immense tutelary power . . . absolute, detailed, regular . . . cover[ing] [society's] surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way."
Tocqueville also foresaw exactly how this regulatory state would suffocate the spirit of free enterprise: "It rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces [the] nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd."
If that makes you bleat with frustration, there's still hope.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324021104578551291160259734.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Community college professor allegedly tells students: support gay rights or else
A professor at a community college in Tennessee allegedly ordered students in her general psychology class to wear “Rainbow Coalition” ribbons for an entire day to advertise support for the advancement of gay and lesbian political causes.The professor, Linda Brunton, informed her students at Columbia State Community College that opponents of gay marriage are “uneducated bigots” who “attack homosexuals with hate,” reports Fox News Radio.
Travis Barham, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal organization, has sent a letter to Columbia State’s president on behalf of several students in Brunton’s class.
The letter seeks an apology to those students because, Barham claims, Brunton violated their First Amendment rights by forcing them to promote a specific political agenda. The letter also calls for the two-year community college to punish Brunton.
Alliance Defending Freedom claims that Brunton instructed students to write a paper describing how they suffered discrimination because they support gay rights. The professor allegedly told students who objected because of their religious convictions that their personal opinions didn’t matter.
“When students objected to how she was pushing her personal views on the class, she explained that it is her job ‘to educate the ignorant and uneducated elements of society,’” Barham told Fox News.
The professor reportedly prohibited any discussion of the morality of homosexuality, rejecting such lines of reasoning as “throwing Bible verses.”
“Dr. Brunton essentially turned her general psychology class into a semester-long clinic on the demands of the homosexual movement,” Barham added.
A representative from Columbia State heard about the kerfuffle from Fox News and promised to find out more. Brunton has not yet commented.
Brunton holds two degrees from Eastern Kentucky University and a doctor of education from Tennessee State University. She is a member of the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Educators Network.
The directional university alumna lists AIDS awareness and education as well as diversity issues among her professional interests.
Brunton’s other interests include “vacationing in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico!” and “swimming with wild dolphins!” (The exclamation points are Brunton’s, not The Daily Caller’s!)
The alleged incident is reasonably similar to an incident involving a math professor at Brevard Community College in Florida who forced her students to sign pledges that they would vote for President Barack Obama last November. The school’s president eventually recommended that the professor, Sharon Sweet, be sacked.
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