Manchin-Biden Deal Balloons IRS to 169,000 Employees and Gives $54 Million to IRS Union

Why wouldn’t Joe Biden want to increase the size of the federal government by 87,000 employees represented by Democrat-supporting union and agency whose administrators have repeatedly targeted Democrats’ political opponents?

Biden’s expansion of the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will likely result in taxpayer’s giving the IRS National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), officers, and employees over $53,563,592!

Since 1990, the NTEU has $9.8 million in contributions. So far, in the 2022 campaign cycle, 100% of the NTEU’s U.S. Senate contributions have gone to Democrats. Additionally, NTEU union officials publicly reported spending $15,893,491 on lobbying since 1998. However, this is only part of the lobbying done by government unions. All government union activities could be viewed as political. Even teacher union General Counsel and Lobbyist Bob Chanin could not separate government union negotiations from politics: “How can I possibly separate NEA’s collective bargaining efforts from politics—you just can’t. It’s all politics.â€

No less than the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to dispute that government sector collective bargaining is “inherently political†“and in fact conceded that ‘decisionmaking by a public employer is above all a political process’ driven more by policy concerns than economic ones.â€*

Let’s break down how incredibly political and corrupt this part one of the Act is.

First, readers need to understand a scheme called “Official Timeâ€

In 2016, Taxpayers paid a reported $22,417,155.78 for NTEU union staff not to work for the federal government. That’s $22.4 million worth of no-show federal jobs. Shockingly, these employees earn paid vacations, promotions, and years of service credits for their pension even if they didn’t actually work on IRS duties for perhaps decades. (See the additional “Official Time†note below for more.)

UNITED STATES OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Official Time Usage in the Federal Government
Fiscal Year 2016

Secondly …

The new Manchin-Biden Act, a.k.a. the Inflation Reduction Act or the Build Back Better2 Act or the New Green New Deal Act, creates according to Forbes estimates 87,000 more IRS employees. Using the Washington Post’s number of 82,000 current IRS employees, we can estimate that the IRS will quickly grow to about 169,000 IRS employees within the NTEU bargaining unit. Based on the 2016 Official Time Report (above) we can assume the following:

1. It is likely that an IRS bargaining unit of 169,000 will result in taxpayer-subsidized IRS union officers and employees’ costs totaling over $53,563,592.
2. If a union has $53.6 million of its overhead paid by the Taxpayer, then most of its dues money is available to pay for lobbying and political activities.
3. If NTEU officers are neither paid by their so-called NTEU members or the non-member employees they represent, then the NTEU officers are unconstrained by the wishes of the people they supposedly represent. In fact, they are more beholden to the politicians who poured taxpayer money into their pockets which dwarf member payments.
4. Based on the three assertions above, one could conclude that no good for the taxpayer, the federal government, the NTEU members, nor any IRS employees (who actually do work for the government) is derived from this observably corrupt official time system.

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“Official Timeâ€

Most taxpayers are shocked to find out their taxes are paid to subsidize federal government union staff. (Also, it is true in most states and many local governments, even in the county of Fairfax, Virginia where our offices are located.) The scheme is ironically called “official time.†It’s ironic because of the taxpayer-paid official time is used for any official government work.

The following federal language from the US Office of Personnel Management “authorizes†this misappropriation of taxpayer money for union activities by officers and staff:

“Official time,†as authorized by 5 U.S.C. § 7131, is paid time spent by Federal employees performing representational work for a bargaining unit in lieu of their regularly assigned work. In other words, official time is treated as work time, thus is funded by the American taxpayers.