Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 249, the misleadingly named Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act. This bill unfairly singles out federal employees for punishment instead of applying a uniform set of rules to individuals who may be delinquent on their taxes.

All Americans should pay their taxes, and those who fail to do so should be penalized. But this bill denies public workers the full complement of due process rights that would be available to any other American under the same circumstances. In effect, this bill would require the firing of any public employee even if they are legitimately contesting their delinquency through the established process. There are laws and regulations on the books that address how tax delinquency should be handled and how public employees who are delinquent on their payments should be disciplined. By by-passing those procedures, this measure unfairly targets public employees simply because they work for the government.

Public servants work hard every day providing a wide array of public services for Americans, from helping to nurse our wounded veterans, to discovering cures and treatments for diseases that plague millions of American families, to protecting our food supply.

The passage of this bill is the latest in a series of unfair congressional attacks on public workers that has ranged from cutting their pay to reducing their benefits. And this bill arrives just as many of them face further pay cuts resulting from agency imposed furloughs.

Federal workers do not deserve to be treated like this.

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