Government affairs

On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee approved legislation (S. 1045) that would allow for the termination of federal employees and postal employees who are seriously delinquent on their tax debt. The bill would also make applicants who have “seriously delinquent tax debts” ineligible for federal employment.

The bill, which was introduced last year by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) was approved by the committee with modest revisions. These included a more lengthy notification process for current federal employees in default and an additional notification of employee to address the situation before termination.

In its current form, the bill targets a small class of current employees, since it has been widely reported by the Internal Revenue Service that 97 percent of federal employees pay their taxes on time, as compared with 92 percent of the general public.

The House passed its companion bill, the “Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act” (H.R. 249) last year, which means that if the Senate continues to advance its version of the bill, the two pieces of legislation would be sent to a conference committee and then to President Obama for his signature.

The NALC strongly opposes legislation that singles out federal and postal employees and will continue to lobby against this attack on workers.